When three long-time and well-respected members of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics start a Change.org petition, you tend to listen.
In less than a day, Regan Jones, Kate Geagan and Rachel Begun collected nearly 3,500 signatures asking the Academy to explain why it chose to allow the “Kids Eat Right” logo on a consumer food product — Kraft Singles — and to #RepealtheSeal.
“We started the petition because we wanted it publicly known that the Academy’s decision didn’t represent our personal values and beliefs, and to provide a unified platform for others to do the same,” says Begun, a registered dietitian and culinary nutritionist.
Most of the Academy members found out about the Kid’s Eat Right and Kraft collaboration from a piece published in The New York Times. More news followed, including this particularly painful Eater article, which features the lead: “The plasticky, processed American ‘cheese’ that typically plays a starring role in burgers and grilled cheese sandwiches is generally considered junk food, but perhaps no longer — if you take the advice of dietitians, anyway.” Ouch. And, not true.
The Academy forbids product endorsements and claims that their move allowing Kraft to use the Academy’s Kids Eat Right logo on its regular 2 percent milk pasteurized prepared cheese product was not an endorsement.
“The reality is that an on-package logo implies an endorsement — not only to consumers who are making food choices for their families, but also to the thousands of registered dietitian/nutritionists who have spoken out against this move,” says Jones, a registered dietitian.
Three easy steps anyone can take to make their voice heard on this issue:
1. Petition. Sign the petition at change.org, which outlines the steps we are asking The Academy and KER take to rectify this situation.
2. Post. Post the attached open letter to the Academy and KER leadership on your blog and/or social media platform(s) to reach your peers and audience. Please use the #RepealTheSeal hashtag. While we kindly ask that you keep the Open Letter intact, if you have any additional thoughts or commentary that would be of interest to your readers, please feel free to include that in your own post.
3. Promote. Please share this open letter and/or links to the petition on your social media platforms or your blog, and please feel free to invite others to repost on their blogs and social media networks. If you do share this on your blog, please include the following suggested language to help your audience understand how they can help support the campaign:
I am participating in the #RepealTheSeal campaign to show my disagreement with the Academy’s recent decision to allow the Kids Eat Right logo onto food packaging. I invite my fellow colleagues and bloggers who share this opinion, or who support this campaign, to also post this open letter on their own blog, to sign the petition at change.org and/or to use #RepealTheSeal hashtag via social media.
Dietitians and Academy members still have more questions than answers. As the word about the Change.org petition spreads, we continue to wait for a swift and appropriate response from the Academy leadership. As Geagan says, “Our feeling was that going public with our petition to the Academy was the only way we could effect REAL change.”
I agree wholeheartedly that placing a logo on a package — any package, in my opinion (yes, I’d feel the same if this was a brand of carrots or edamame) — implies an endorsement, which is problematic if the Academy and its members are to maintain their credibility and public trust.
I signed the petition to #RepealTheSeal because I support transparency, and I would like to see more effective solutions for the goals of the Kids Eat Right program that does not involve placing logos on products. I encourage anyone who cares about our issue to sign the petition and make your voice heard.
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In Defense of 75,000 Dietitians originally appeared on usnews.com