Heart Assn. Goes Out on Limb With Food Labels

The American Heart Assn. put its considerable public credibility on the line last week when it ignored federal warnings and launched its HeartGuide program to tell Americans which processed foods are “heart healthy.”

Even those who support the move acknowledge it is risky because the heart association has, until now, had the image of a group that stayed above political battles. To win its gamble, the heart association has to avoid a protracted battle with the Food and Drug Administration that could at least stall and perhaps even kill HeartGuide.

“I think the heart association is very gutsy to do this, because taking on the food industry is not an easy thing,” said Sonja Connor, a leading researcher on dietary fats at Oregon Health Sciences University. But in the long run the public could become suspicious of the AHA’s credibility.”

The FDA announced Jan. 24 that, as the U. S. Department of Agriculture had said last year, it would move aggressively against foods that it deemed “misbranded” with the HeartGuide logo. The HeartGuide program asks companies to submit products for total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium content testing. Foods that pass will be able to use the HeartGuide logo on packages and in advertising.

The FDA charges that the program would mislead consumers into thinking that their hearts would benefit if they ate unlimited amounts of foods with the HeartGuide label--even margarines and oils. In addition, annual fees for participation--up to $640,000 per brand, though so far the average charge has been about $70,000--have angered some food processors.

As of Monday, the signs continued to look bad for this landmark effort to place a private organization’s nutritional standards into what consumer groups have long seen as a governmental near-vacuum.

Heart association officials continued hopeful talk of rapprochement, but FDA officials were not sounding ready for compromise.

“We’re going to be looking for some of the products that carry the heart logo, and if we think they’re misbranded, then we’re going to take action,” said Raymond E. Newberry, deputy director of the FDA’s regulatory guidance division.

The agency’s actions to stop the sale of such “misbranded” foods could in the extreme include seizure of the products.

Food companies stuck by HeartGuide until last Thursday, when one of the biggest potential participants, CPC International, suspended its participation until the heart association and FDA settle the dispute.

CPC divisions market two brands that had gained HeartGuide approvals, Mazola oil and margarine and Devonsheer crackers.

CPC also makes Best Foods mayonnaise, which would have been eligible to participate in next summer’s planned second wave of HeartGuide labeling.

The loss of Mazola and Devonsheer drops from 103 to 80 the number of HeartGuide products that the heart association hopes will begin appearing in stores in mid- to late February.

If the FDA’s action succeeds in scaring away other current or future participants, HeartGuide will be left as a program without any products or money--since the entire effort is being funded by fees from the participating companies.

Indeed, it is this issue of money that for the first time has cast the heart association in the role of villain. For decades before this, the association’s actions have come in the form of free dietary or therapeutic recommendations that were closer to science than politics.

This time, the heart association is being portrayed as money-hungry and secretive even though it protests that it is merely doing the best it can in an area where the federal government has failed to tread.

“We’re not knocking the heart association. They’ve done a lot of good research and education work. But now they’re into the marketing and advertising arena,” said Roger Coleman, vice president for communication at the National Food Processors Assn. “Anybody who’s thought about the precedent that would be set by widespread use of the HeartGuide symbol comes to the same conclusions that we have.”

The irony in the dispute is that both the FDA’s nutritionists and the heart association agree that excessive amounts of total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium are linked to cardiovascular problems.

Under former Commissioner Frank E. Young, the FDA even served notice last year that it was considering changing food labeling rules to give consumers more nutritional information on food components linked to chronic diseases. Hearings were held in several U.S. cities late last year.

Where the two groups diverge, though, is on how to attack the labeling question. The FDA wants any labeling changes to aim for a “total diet” approach, and not just foods linked to heart disease. The heart association says enough is known about dietary causes of heart attack and stroke to attack that dietary problem now.

The FDA has been lumbering for more than a decade through a process that the agency says is designed to protect consumers but also assure fairness of any new labeling rules. The last comprehensive labeling rule change, requiring a nutrient content breakdown only for products that make particular nutrient claims such as “vitamin-enriched,” occurred in 1973.

Critics point out that for the last decade labeling revisions have stalled repeatedly as President Ronald Reagan made good on his anti-regulation philosophy.

John Vanderveen, chief of the FDA nutrition division, bristles at the notion that the FDA has been lax in pursuing nutrition labeling. He said the process, particularly over the last year, has been moving at “breakneck” speed.

Proposed labeling rules could emerge in the coming spring, Vanderveen said, and final rules could be adopted by fall. But he acknowledges that delays are common in government.

The frustration about nutritional labeling is coming not just from the heart association but also from Congress. Bills mandating FDA action are being sponsored by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).

The National Food Processors Assn. supports the Hatch bill, because it would include a provision for “pre-emption”--meaning food processors wouldn’t be subject to state labeling laws. Included among these would be California’s Proposition 65, which among other provisions would require food labels to include notices of an toxic residues in the food.

Longtime consumer advocacy groups, however, are favoring either the Waxman or the Metzenbaum bills, and are upset at hints that food processors will support them only if a pre-emption provision is included.

In such an arena, it’s easy for the specifics of the HeartGuide program to be lost. Simply, the idea is for food companies to submit products for fat, cholesterol and sodium content testing by the heart association. The companies receive copies of the criteria in advance, so they are unlikely to submit products that won’t pass, said Jamie Poth, a spokeswoman for the program.

But if a product doesn’t meet the criteria, the company can reformulate it--substitute vegetable oil for saturated fats, for instance, or cut down on the salt content--and resubmit it.

Once the product is approved, the heart association still retains approval rights over its packaging and advertising, to assure that no false health claims are made.

Companies pay $10,000 to $40,000 for initial testing, and a much higher fee, up to $600,000 depending on market share, to fund the nutrition education advertising and brochures that are part of HeartGuide.

Chief criticisms of the program are its appearance of selling endorsements, the secrecy of the criteria (companies must pledge non-disclosure) and that the HeartGuide logo will mislead consumers.

The heart association replies that charging the companies for what, in the end, is a marketing tool for them is preferable to using part of the association’s $172-million annual research/education budget to do so. They said criteria are being closely guarded because, otherwise, manufacturers could claim to meet them even without going through testing. They eventually will be released, Poth said.

In the end, everyone agrees, the root of the controversy is that consumers are hungry for information about how to choose healthier foods in the grocery store but no one has figured out how best to give it to them.

What consumers will see when HeartGuide-approved products arrive in stores will likely seem to be much ado about nearly nothing.

Of more than 100 products approved in HeartGuide’s first round, the vast majority are not the kind of artery-clogging food Americans munched as they watched the Super Bowl.

Sixty-five of the approved products are frozen vegetables--cauliflower, carrots, succotash and the like. In the crackers category, there were none shaped like animals or advertised by TV stars. Only CPC’s Devonsheer chose to seek the HeartGuide seal, for 17 different varieties of an item supermarkets put on their highest shelves: melba toast.

Among margarines, spreads and oils, the only products that emerged were ones that already have a heart-healthy or low-calorie profile. Two of the four cooking oils, for instance, are brands of olive oil or canola oil, which are high in the monounsaturated fats that recent research has indicated are good for the body’s cholesterol balance and, in the case of olive oil, perhaps also for blood pressure.

If HeartGuide survives federal scrutiny and manufacturers participate in it, the program’s next round will look at items that should prove more interesting. They include cereals, cheese, cookies, cottage cheese, yogurt, salad dressings and soups.

Saturated fats and excess fats frequently are “hidden” in cereals, cookies and salad dressings, and salt likely would be the major issue in evaluating soups.

As the association prepared to launch the program last month, heart association president Dr. Myron L. Weisfeldt was anticipating criticism, if not the FDA threats. In the absence of FDA rules, he says, consumers need HeartGuide’s standards.