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Paranoid Parents is establishing a top international panel of advisors to set guidelines for product approval based on the latest, most credible health and safety research. Soon the Paranoid Parents logo of the parent and child will appear on children's food products and bodycare products to let you know that these are the products that meet high standards.A company can call itself "100% Natural" and not be natural. It is the name of the company not a description of food content. Or a product can read "Made with 100% Real Fruit" but only have less than 1% real fruit in it. Most Toy seals and awards are entirely subjective but parents, desparate for guidance, will buy indiscriminately if there is a seal on the box. To crack down on this misleading advertising particularly in the area of children's product, experts have devised a nutritional profiling method. Food carrying our logo have significant nutritional content.
MISLEADING SEALS AND AWARDS:
Most ‘healthy’ seals of approval are not what the public perceive them to be.
The Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval is simply an extended 2 year warrantee and not a lab tested quality product as is perceived. The participating company promises to replace a product if it goes faulty in 2 years—valuable in the 1960s but not now with automatic warrantees.
Good Housekeeping has a Good Housekeeping Lab where they test a few products for articles in their magazine. They are beginning to offer a lab test seal but with the other Seal, it is confusing and limited.
Oprah’s diet guru, Bob Greene has a very popular Right Life Seal. Companies who pay to sport the seal only have to agree to TRY to make healthier products over the next 20 years.
Most ‘best products’ awards Numerous awards and seals are marketing tools set up by advertising companies as a way to drive sales. They appear to be independent awards but are paid for by the manufacturers to the advertising company. You pay the advertising company for your product to win the award.
How the Seal of Approval works:
1. Paranoid Parents will concentrate on
- Health(body care): limits on parabens, phalates, low quality petroleum, etc<
- Nutritional content of food using modified European White Paper guidelines
- Toys: looking at quantifiable exemplary quality control in production and design
2. Companies pay money to have us test each product, sharing with us confidentially the complete ingredients list, including proprietary information, which we test against our guidelines. In the two years that the seal runs, we will perform at least one random lab test.
-- Three levels of testing for different certificates
- Bronze-general approval by our basic guidelines
- Silver – for eco-sustainability and work force ethics
- Gold –for additional tests by experts and field testing with defined test groups and a set criteria and evaluation
Silver and Gold Associates programs cost more as the companies must supply us with more data, requiring more checks or for Gold at least 30 test products
Field testing takes place in the TOY LAB room in our Denver location with appropriate groups (nursery schools, Boy Scout groups, etc invited for testing). The groups would be interviewed by our staff. Tested toys would be distributed to children in need.
3. If the product and production method passes our test, our Seal of Approval can be printed on their packaging.
4. Products would need to be submitted every 2 years or when there is a major ingredient change.
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5. We would do random lab tests with a major product testing organization that we have found.
6. We are basing our approval on the honesty of the paperwork that the companies provide us with. This will be clear in all of our printed and online material. If something goes wrong with their product or they have given us fraudulent information, the liability rests with them and not us.
Applying for the seal does not guarantee the acceptance. Applying for the Gold level does not guarantee acceptance at that level. But because the criteria are published, companies will have a good idea where they will rate before starting the process.
Processed Foods
Products: We will be targeting children’s products in particular.
Criteria: We have selected the European Parliament White Paper on Nutritional Profiling as our standard. (See attached.) Prepared over 10 years, the world’s top doctors and nutritionists, economists and childhood specialists have determined a formula for accessing the nutritional content of food. Basically, the fat, salt and sugar of 100 grams of a product are given a rating and added up, then the protein, fiber, fruit and vegetable content, and natural vitamins (not fortified which do not absorb or act like natural vitamins) are given a numerical rating. The ‘healthy’ number is subtracted from the ‘unhealthy’ content and a number is reached, usually between -4 and 30---although most food should fall between 0-10.
Foods under 4 are considered nutritional. Those about 4 are not healthy.
In the testing that Paranoid Parents has done of 500+ foods, very few ‘normal’ American common children’s foods had a rating under 10. We therefore proposed to class foods with a 4, not 3, or under, nutritionally acceptable. We would not be able to approve enough foods to make it a significant Seal if we had to approve under 4.
For example, we tested 36 brands of ORGANIC macaroni and cheese. Only one came in at a rating of 4. The majority were in the 10-12 range making them totally unacceptable—their fat and salt content were higher than Krafts Macaroni and Cheese. We would still prefer parents by organic to avoid the chemical cocktail of colorings and additives, but even organic can be very bad for children.
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