Basically, you’ll begin to see these green checkmark labels on all sorts of packaged and processed foods throughout your local grocery store. The label was created to help us make smarter food and beverage choices. From Skippy peanut butter to Hellman’s mayonnaise to Fruit Loops and Fudgsicles. These are the smarter choices. This is the kind of help we get from the food industry.

It’s appalling.

So appalling in fact that the FDA and USDA have written letters to the program managers saying the’ll be keeping a close eye on how the program affects consumer food choices. It seems they’re just a bit concerned that a campaign like this won’t have much of a positive influence on the supposed obesity epidemic going around in the United States.

But the best part of the story is this: The esteemed Dr. Eileen Kennedy, Dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University and President of the Smart Choices board actually defended the products endorsed by this campaign by providing a hypothetical situation where a parent is shopping for their child in the grocery store. She says, “You’re rushing around, you’re trying to think about healthy eating for your kids and you have a choice between a doughnut and a cereal. So Froot Loops is a better choice.”

Folks, that kind of logic should be coming from someone like Paula Dean’s mouth – the cooking show host who made a burger on national TV and replaced the bun with a Krispy Kreme donut, certainly not from the Dean of Nutrition at Tufts University. And is it too hard to think that a parent, in their frantic thoughts of healthy eating, might consider a piece of fruit or something else other than a box of processed, sugary food for their child?

So companies like Pepsi, Kraft, General Mills, and Tyson have all signed up for this program, each paying up to $100,000 a year. And with this campaign in place, they’ve basically figured out a way to create a single label that can go on all of their products, supporting a so-called healthier choice for consumers. But according to Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the panel that came up with the nutritional criteria for the Smart Choices program was primarily made up of thugs in the food industry, which led to some biased opinions around the decision-making table. Needless to say, Jacobson bailed on the project because of what he considered heavy food industry influence.

One of the criteria Jacobson objected to was one that allowed the Smart Choices label to be on items that contained added nutrients. So even though USDA guidelines support whole grains, if bread wasn’t made from whole grains but had some added nutrients, it would get the Smart Choices label.

“You could start out with some sawdust, add calcium or Vitamin A and meet the criteria,” Mr. Jacobson said.

Clearly Bob Vila is in the wrong business.