Designed to Deceive.

Not all ads are bad. Flip through a handful of magazines or a half-dozen channels and you'll see some ads that could almost double as public service announcements. They tell you to:

* drink Florida orange juice to cut your risk of cancer;

* get folic acid from Kellogg's Corn Flakes or Special K to prevent birth defects;

* eat meatless Boca Burgers instead of hamburger;

* drink low-fat milk or calcium-fortified Minute Maid or Tropicana orange juice to protect your bones.

But other ads are designed to deceive. Some make you think you're getting something good--like fruit or whole grains--when the food has only a smidgen. Others exaggerate (to put it kindly) the evidence that good foods like oatmeal or All-Bran cut the risk of disease. Maybe they figure that they can get away with bad ads as long as the ads push good foods. Wrong.

No one likes to be lied to. It leaves consumers back where they started ... wondering which claims are honest and which aren't.

Amazing Oat Claims

"Something amazing happened here in Lafayette, Colorado," says one man. "Thanks to oatmeal ... eight of us lowered our cholesterol," say others.

"Mine went down 17 points," boasts one woman.

Brilliant marketing. Lousy science. The ads are part of Quaker's Smart Heart Challenge, which is taking place in communities across the country. A hundred folks each eat a large bowl of (free) oatmeal every day for a month, and Quaker touts the results: an average 25-point drop in cholesterol.

The only problem: Oatmeal accounts for just half the drop. The company's Web site (www.quaker oatmeal.com)--not its ads--explains that "we knew from previous studies that we could expect oatmeal alone to lower cholesterol levels by 4-8 percent, but we were also looking to oatmeal as a catalyst for other lifestyle changes, like eating better and exercising more."

No kidding. After they signed up for the Challenge, says Quaker, Lafayette participants started exercising more or eating less fat, more grains, and more bread.

Quaker could easily have measured only the oatmeal's impact on cholesterol. It could have randomly assigned 100 people to eat either oatmeal or another cereal (like Wheatena) and compared the groups' cholesterol levels.

Looks like Quaker was more interested in sales than science.

A Strawberry in Every Box

"Like Pop-Tarts but better," boast the ads for Pillsbury's Strawberry Toaster Strudel. A big selling point: the strudel's "delicious juicy fruit filling." And the label, which features two gorgeous strawberries, explains that you get "artificial strawberry flavor with real fruit."

To its credit, the ingredient list discloses that the filling is only ten percent strawberries. So how much fruit does each pastry contain? The strudels have more fat than fruit filling. And since each pastry has nine grams of fat (nearly twice as much as a Pop-Tart, by the way), you get less than a gram of fruit in each. That's about one-seventh of a strawberry.

A New Twist

A new series of ads touts V8 as a way to ward off illness and aging. A few of the ads are actually true.

One simply states that "V8 Healthy Request contains a full serving of vegetables" and that "studies show that diets low in fat and rich in fruits and vegetables may reduce the risk of some cancers." The cancer claim is approved by the Food and Drug Administration. And, like other health claims, it's only allowed on the labels of foods--like V8 Healthy Request--that aren't high in salt.

But an eight-ounce glass of regular V8 has 620 mg of sodium, so it can't make a health claim on the label. Instead, Campbell is running magazine ads that say that V8 is "an excellent source of the antioxidants Vitamin A and Vitamin C." They add this unapproved claim:

"Research suggests that antioxidants may help slow changes that occur with normal aging."

It's too early to know if that's true. And it may be that other antioxidants like vitamin E--which aren't plentiful in V8--are the ones that slow those changes.

The ad is mum on one change that clearly occurs with aging: blood pressure inches up. More than half of Americans in their sixties have high blood pressure. And that's a change that salty V8 makes worse.

SnackWrong

Perfect plump peaches, flawless crimson strawberries, crisp apple slices--all tumbling down in slow motion.

"SnackWell's brings you Hearty Fruit 'n Grain Cereal Bars with new orchard-fresh flavors like Country Fruit Medley," gushes the narrator as a mother and son walk along a beach.

It's enough to make you weep. And you may do just that after you bite into one of these babies. Turns out most of the "hearty grain" is plain old white flour, which explains why each bar provides less than a gram of fiber. And the "natural orchard fruit filling" has more sugar, corn syrup, and dextrose than apples, peaches, and strawberries.

If you don't believe us, take apart a bar. We got about 1 1/2 tablespoons of filling. And it looked nothing like the fruits in the ad ... or the ones you're skipping when you reach for a SnackWell's instead.

Like most cereal bars, this is just an oversized vitamin-fortified Fig Newton.

All Bluster

"Recently, a U.S. government agency and a major university completed a laboratory study," reports the ad.

"Scientists found that processing wheat bran into breakfast cereal, like Kellogg's All-Bran, can be more effective in delivering the helpful properties of wheat bran. And a low-fat, high-fiber diet with fruits, vegetables and grain products, including Kellogg's All-Bran, may help reduce the risk of colon cancer."

What Kellogg wants you to hear: All-Bran prevents colon cancer. The government and a major university say so. The truth: The "laboratory study" was done in rats, not people. It measured something called aberrant crypt cells, not tumors. And it has yet to be published, so no one can evaluate it.

Wheat bran--any wheat bran --may indeed prevent colon cancer. But until it's proven, Kellogg shouldn't make it sound like a done deal.