MediaPost recently named Campbell's their 2008 "Food Marketer of the Year," in no small part due to their "feisty head-on assault on General Mills' Progresso." Now, I practically do live under a rock and even I've seen these ads -- Campbell's is all, "Hey, Progresso, there's MSG in your soup," and Progresso is all, "Nuh-uh! My soup is as pure as the driven snow! And your soup is just crawling with the stuff!"

What I don't get is, why'd they choose this particular battleground? Especially since both of them use MSG in most, if not all, of their products, even if they're correctly stating that they have a number of products that don't have pure monosodium glutamate" among the ingredients.

In both the print and the TV ads from both Campbell's and Progresso, when they're touting their lines of "MSG-free" soups, you'll see small print at the bottom to the gist of "no MSG...excluding that which naturally occurs in hydrolyzed vegetable protein" or "excluding that which occurs in autolyzed yeast extract," depending on whose salvo in the ad war you're seeing.

Trouble is, these ingredients listed in the fine print are flavor enhancers that are used in the same manner as MSG and that include some of the same compounds -- free glutamates -- that are thought to cause the umami flavors and potential adverse health effects in sensitive individuals that MSG does. This is why the FDA considers it misleading to label foods with hydrolyzed vegetable proteins as containing "no MSG" or "no added MSG." Autolyzed yeast extract, another ingredient added mainly for the free glutamates, is a similar compound. Yet these ads are clearly intended to leave the impression that many of both companies' products are free from ingredients that many consumers may want to avoid.

Consumers do believe claims that are stated this clearly in advertisements. Claims about MSG in food are one place where enforcement is lacking, and anywhere product labeling is misleading or inaccurate, consumers with allergies or sensitivities lose.

• Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal: Progresso, Campbell's Soup War Reaches Boiling Point
• Truth in Labeling: Misleading and Deceptive Use of 'No MSG' to Hide MSG

Check out the latest Living with Food Allergies Blog Carnival, recently posted at The Allergic Kid. Enjoy all the most recent food allergy writing from around the blogosphere!

While I am not a cell phone person, there are (to me at least) a gobsmacking number of iPhones among my extended family. And whenever two iPhone owners get together, one of the first questions is, "what Apps do you have?" At which point there is much oohing and aahing over, say, the spiffy alarm clock or the nifty Crayon Physics game.

The upshot of all this iPhone slinging is that I got to spend a fair bit of time poking around the App store for allergy-related iPhone Apps. The most obvious absences I found? I had a hard time finding a food log that's not aimed at weight loss or diabetes management, or an app to help decipher food labels, especially for ingredients not covered by FALCPA. But there are some apps that you might find worthwhile. This is by no means intended as a comprehensive list, since new Apps are added all the time and pricing and other details can change without notice. All six of these programs, some allergen-specific and some more general, are currently rated at least good by iPhone users and are available for download on iTunes or in the App store:

• Allergy Companion NoPeanut ($2.99). Includes multi-language allergy restaurant cards and emergency cards for around the world, links to information about allergens, and foods to avoid in major chain restaurants around the United States and Canada.
• WebArtisan Food Additives ($3.99). Provides general information about the provenance of several hundred food additives, including those that are inappropriate for gluten-free or other additive-free diets.
• Pepper Stuff Gluten-Free Restaurant Cards from CeliacTravel.com (Free). Multi-language allergy cards that celiacs can show to waitstaff and chefs to help manage a gluten-free diet abroad. (Also useful to those with wheat allergies.)
• Jive Media LLC Pocket First Aid and CPR Guide ($1.99). Basic first aid articles, plus a place to store your doctor's contact information and your allergies and medication (or your child's).
• Polka Close Call (Free). Allows you to overlay an emergency phone number and a short message ("I am allergic to shellfish," e.g.) over a custom wallpaper image so that in an emergency, someone who finds your phone can get to an emergency contact without unlocking your iPhone.
• e-Agent Asthma-Charter ($4.99). Peak flow and medication monitoring application that charts your measurements and allows you to share your results with your doctor. Useful if, like many people with food allergies, you're managing asthma too.

While you can make a case that any behavior worth changing on January 1st is worth changing anytime, the fact is that beginnings and transitions are natural times for us to switch things up a bit. The New Year is a big one, but the first of the month -- even the first of the week, like the Healthy Mondays program About runs with Columbia University's Postman School of Public Health -- is another opportune time to look at small changes and work them into your routine.

My colleague Nancy Lapid just wrote a great article about New Year's resolutions for people with celiac disease, and so many of them are applicable for anyone on any restricted diet for a food allergy or intolerance -- reminding yourself in advance why it's so important not to cheat, keeping safe comfort foods in the house, trying to change your outlook and think more positively if you look at your diet as a drag, and changing your health routine to get more exercise and healthy foods within the constraints of your dietary restrictions. I highly recommend it for anyone who reads this site -- and I hope everyone has a happy New Year's celebration and a lovely 2009.