Kellogg lies about its cereal, the NFL gradually addresses the issue of concussions and a championship for Cleveland (sort of)

- Could you please stop lying about the health benefits of your breakfast cereals, Kellogg? No one eats cereal because they want some great health food, so just be up front about what you put into it and what effect it will have on someone who consumes it. Aside from being a responsible business, you would also see the nice fringe benefit of not having the Federal Trade Commission bring false advertising charges against you twice in one year. Right now, that’s exactly what Kellogg is dealing with, settling on charges that it presented misleading information about the health benefits of its Rice Krispies cereal. Kellogg claimed that Rice Krispies boosts a child's immunity with "25 percent Daily Value of Antioxidants and Nutrients – Vitamins A, B, C and E," a claim the FTC labeled "dubious" while ordering the company to discontinue all advertising stating these facts. Kellogg has agreed to the order, which seems like a wise move given the fact that the FTC likely has enough long-term memory to remember back to last April, when the Kellogg Company settled FTC charges over false advertising claims for another of its breakfast cereals, Frosted Mini-Wheats. That campaign claimed the cereal was clinically shown to improve kids' attentiveness by nearly 20 percent, a claim that seemed dubious at the itme, in no small part because it was fronted by a talking piece of frosted, shredded wheat cereal. When the FTC conducted clinical studies of Frosted Flakes, it discovered that only half the children who ate the cereal had improved attentiveness and that very few–only 1 in 9 - were 20 percent more attentive. That case was also settled and the terms of the settlement barred Kellogg from making these claims, and from misrepresenting test results in any breakfast or snack food products. "We expect more from a great American company than making dubious claims – not once, but twice – that its cereals improve children's health," said FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz. "Next time, Kellogg needs to stop and think twice about the claims it's making before rolling out a new ad campaign, so parents can make the best choices for their children." In light of this second showdown, the FTC has modified its original order from the first case and has now barred Kellogg from making any misleading or unsubstantiated health-related claims about any of the food products the company sells unless there is scientific evidence to back those claims. "What is particularly disconcerting to us," said FTC Commissioner Julie Brill, "Is that at the same time Kellogg was making promises to the commission regarding Frosted Mini-Wheats, the company was preparing to make problematic claims about Rice Krispies." Well, you didn’t say anything about Rice Krispies at the time, FTC. Anyone who knows breakfast cereal knows that Mini-Wheats and Rice Krispies are two very different breakfast cereals. Next time, be clearer about what you want a company to do or not do. As for Kellogg, the company released a statement: "Kellogg Company has a long history of responsible advertising. We stand behind the validity of our product claims and research, so we agreed to an order that covers those claims. We believe that the revisions to the existing consent agreement satisfied any remaining concerns." With that, Kellogg also signed an official FTC order, which is just like a court order and is legally binding. What that means is if the company violates the order in any way, it could be fined up to $16,000 per violation. Now, can anyone tell me what sort of health benefits I can get from a nice, big bowl of sugar-coated Frosted Flakes…………

- Remember back in 2008 when the world turned its eyes on Beijing, looking forward to the 2008 Summer Olympics in China’s capital city? What you may not recall from that same time is the rampant, suffocating pollution hanging over the city and concerns as to whether the air quality would actually be good enough to allow athletes, especially those in endurance events, to safely participate. You had competitors showing up to the Games with surgical masks on, refusing the venture outside of their hotel rooms except for competitions and a general anxiety about how much damage they were doing to their lungs merely by attending the Olympics in the first place. Chinese officials went insane in their quest to ride Beijing’s air of pollution, taking unprecedented and often controversial measures to sanitize the air. These officials could not have cared less than much of the rest of the country was still covered in a thick blanket of noxious smog, just as long as Beijing looked nice and had (somewhat) breathable air for visitors and athletes. At that time, a stunning 16 of the world's 20 most-polluted cities were in China. At present, it would seem that most of those 16 cities have done little to nothing to remove themselves from that dubious list. Chief among the offending cities is Linfen, a coal-mining and manufacturing hub in the heart of Shanxi Province. A film crew recently visited the landlocked province in northern China to see just what the single most polluted place on Earth looks like. The crew found a city in which the sun disappears much earlier in the day than it’s supposed to, dropping from view behind a curtain of smog above the true horizon. Living with air that would choke the breath out of most people has become a way of life in Linfen and many of the city’s elderly have trouble speaking between gasps of emphysema. The water is nearly as polluted as the air, with that dynamic duo causing many longtime residents to move from the city. Way to show that you were serious about cleaning up your air and ceasing your massive damage done on a daily basis to the Earth’s atmosphere, China………..

- And so the debate on how to handle concussions among National Football League players drags on. Don’t get the wrong idea; I’m all for addressing the concussion issue and making players safer both now and after their careers are over. However, I cannot for the life of me understand why it seems to be such a battle to get everyone on the same page and taking steps toward properly addressing the prevention and treatment of concussions. The latest step in this interminably long process came Wednesday at a meeting on football and brain injury. Neurologists at the daylong seminar with the NFL explained that even without symptoms, blows to the head can be deceptively severe. They “can lead to long-term consequences or later emergence of symptoms,” said Dr. Constantine Lyketsos, a doctor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine after a . “Symptom severity is not a clear indicator of how badly the brain is injured.” Medical representatives from all 32 NFL teams and commissioner Roger Goodell were on hand at several experts from Johns Hopkins Medicine spoke on concussions. Given that the NFL has been accused of minimizing evidence about the dangers of football concussions, you’d think that gathering for seminars would have happened a long time ago and that the league would be actively moving forward on the issue by now. Maybe hearing Lyketsos say a study has shown an average college football player endures about 950 blows to the head during a season will open NFL eyes. The force of those blows may vary, but none of them are gentle love taps, it would seem safe to say. Helmet technology allowing real-time monitoring of the impact of hits to the head is available, so perhaps that should be implemented sooner rather than later. The seminar focused on four major concussion-related topics:1) asymptomatic effects of blows to the head and their consequences, 2) head injuries and their relation to cognitive decline, dementia, depression, 3) chronic traumatic encephalopathy, repeated head injury, often seen in professional boxers that also occurs in NFL players and 4) how long it takes for the brain to recover after a significant hit. This research isn’t relevant only to elite football players. “What we learn about long-term consequence for football players has implication for millions of athletes who suffer concussion and head blows,” Lysetkos said. “It also has implications for soldiers who are at increased exposure to blasts.” Whether this meeting of the minds leads to any substantive action on the part of the NFL remains to be seen, but past evidence doesn’t exactly inspire a lot of hope for that…………

- Cleveland, LeBron James may be about to leave you, the Cavs may have no head coach and the Browns and Indians may be…..well, the Browns and Indians, but at least you have one champion you can hang your hat on - sort of. Even though 14-year-old Anamika Veeramani, the champion of the 83rd Scripps National Spelling Bee, doesn’t technically hail from C-Town, she’s close enough for the downtrodden residents of one of America’s most tortured sports cities to count her as one of their own. Veeramani, who lives in the Cleveland suburb of North Royalton, snagged the winner's trophy, which also comes with more than $40,000 in cash and prizes, and exclaimed, "Go Cavs!" shortly after winning. The eighth-grader also plays golf, likes to dance, wants to go to Harvard and become a cardiovascular surgeon, so those winnings should help her there. The word she won on, fittingly enough for an aspiring surgeon, was the medical term "stromuhr." Veeramani was icy calm throughout the event and didn’t smile until it was all over. "It was too surreal," she said. "It was an amazing experience. I usually have a poker face, so that's what that was." Veeramani also had experience on her side, having tied for fifth last year. She also became the third consecutive Indian-American champion, and the eighth the last 12 years. In so doing, she broke a spelling bee championship drought for the state of Ohio, which had not had a winner since 1964. Her closest competitors were Adrian Gunawan, 14, of Arlington Heights, Ill.; Elizabeth Platz, 13, of Shelbina, Mo.; and Shantanu Srivatsa, 13, of West Fargo, N.D., all of whom were eliminated in the same round. A total of 273 spellers began the event on Wednesday, but only Veeramani was left standing at the end of the three days. She overcame a tough word - "juviam" a Brazil nut, then waited through a 3½-minute commercial before spelling the championship word. "It was just really nerve-racking," Veeramani said. "The commercial breaks didn't really help." Her win wasn’t without controversy, as organizers stopped the semifinals in the middle of a round early Friday afternoon with 10 spellers left because they worried there wouldn't be enough spellers left to fill the event’s upcoming two-hour slot on ABC. Six of those who abruptly advanced to the finals didn’t have to spell a word in the interrupted round. That was a problem because the order of each round is determined by the alphabetical order of the U.S. states, so some of the spellers who were eliminated in the interrupted round before it was stopped merely had the misfortune of going early in the round when a later position could have placed them in the finals without having to spell a word. Such are the pitfalls when your dork-fest garners a prime-time slot on a major over-air network. In the end, it resulted in a championship for the Cleveland area and because I don’t think any of the city’s sports franchises will be delivering one of those any time soon, this one will have to do……………

- It’s worked before, but I don’t believe this campaign to save a canceled TV show is going to work. Fans of the ABC drama FlashForward are hoping that they can reverse the network’s decision to pull the plug on the sci-fi drama after one short season and are using the show’s own mythology to stage protests for the cause. The show’s premise was based upon a massive global blackout affecting every person in the world losing consciousness for two minutes and to lobby for their favorite show’s renewal, FlashForward fans will stage massive blackouts in front of ABC offices in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and several other major cities on June 10. "On October 6, 2009, the whole world blacked out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds, at the start of what promised to be ABC's new hit show, FlashForward," the "Save FlashForward" website says. "On June 10th, there will be another blackout, this time to change fate." The demonstrations will take place weeks after ABC chose not to renew the ratings-deficient first-year drama, which launched to major fanfare but saw its ratings quickly decline once the “new car” smell wore off. The staged blackouts are just one tactic in the fight to keep the show alive, along with mailing out calendars with the date April 29th circled (the date of the show’s flash-forwards and of the second global blackout), friendship bracelets like the one a character on the show gave her father and letters to ABC President Stephen McPherson. Other grassroots efforts to save shows have met with varying degrees of success. In 2008, Jericho fans sent peanuts CBS executives (trust me, it made sense in relation to the show) and were able to coax a short second season from the network. A more recent example is one of my favorite shows, NBC’s Chuck, which fans saved after two seasons by flocking to series advertiser Subway as part of the "Finale and a Footlong" campaign. That led to a full third season for the spy comedy/drama and with that second chance, Chuck performed well enough to garner a fourth season. FlashForward's ended on May 27 season with a cliffhanger-heavy finale that attracted 4.95 million viewers. Ultimately, bringing the show back to life is all but impossible. Three of the drama's main cast members have already committed to other TV projects and so fans will just have to live with the reality that main characters Benford and FBI agent Janis Hawk (Christine Woods) will forever be in television limbo, stuck in either 2011 or 2015 - or perhaps somewhere in between………….