Virtual Nutritionist My A$$

I feel like I make an honest effort to be positive and open-minded, but when I read and article like this I just cringe.

Like a virtual nutritionist, NutriFilter sifts through all the products available online and highlights the ones that meet customers’ unique nutritional needs, whether it’s for gluten-free, peanut-free or low-fat foods, or foods that meet other requirements, such as being Kosher, organic, high- (or low-) fiber, or even as specific as high in Vitamin A or calcium.

Excuse me, what? A “virtual nutritionist”? Give me a break.  But wait, there’s more…

One can create a sort of dream label, specifying maximum calories, grams of fat, milligrams of potassium, and so on, and then activate that specific filter before hitting the aisles to shop in the most customized fashion imaginable.

Ohhh a “dream label”. I can see it now. For one person its “whatever doesn’t make me gain weight” and another person “whatever helps me bulk up” and yet another “whatever is fat free sugar free and fill-in-the-blank free”.

This online tool might help you read food labels or quickly find gluten-free products if you have a food allergy, but it is by no means comparable to a nutritionist.

As a student of marketing and communications, I learned if it reads like a press release, it is probably a press release.  This is obviously a press release – a really bad one!

Note to whomever wrote this garbage: 1. think about whether or not your product can measure up to the claims you make and be prepared to stand by them 2. reconsider statements that have the potential to insult hundreds of thousands of food and nutrition experts, especially if you want them to use or recommend your product.

Don’t get me wrong, the tool is not the problem and if it is easy-to-use it could be very beneficial. But I am so put off by the way it is presented to consumers that I have no desire to check it out. (today at least, maybe I’ll decide differently tomorrow)