San Francisco Goes After Crazy Cereal Health Claims

When the "Smart Choices" program suspended operations in the face of warnings from the Food and Drug Administration that it would investigate the program's claims that, for example, Ritz Bits Peanut Butter Chocolatey Blast crackers were good for you and your kids, health advocates cheered. Twitter was all atwitter with virtual high-fiving.

But the suspension of Smart Choices didn't stop insane label claims. Far from it. For example, Kellogg's (K) Cocoa Krispies is still claiming, in giant letters emblazoned across the box, that the sugary cereal "[n]ow helps support your child's immunity."

In this worrisome time of virulent viruses, such a claim is likely to give some parents the wrong idea. But really, at any time, such a claim is at best amoral and at worst sinister.

And Dennis Herrera, San Francisco's city attorney, is having none of it. He wrote to Kellogg this week demanding that the company substantiate the claim, lest he "seek an immediate termination or modification of the advertising claim."

"I am concerned," Herrera wrote (pdf), "that the prominent use of the Immunity Claims to advertise a sugar-laden, chocolate cereal like Cocoa Krispies may mislead and deceive parents of young children."

Herrera, it should be noted, is thought to be considering a mayoral run in 2011. That doesn't mean he's wrong, of course, but does the city really have power over label claims on consumer products?