Robert B. Choate Jr., 84, a self-styled “citizen lobbyist” who in the 1960s and ’70s played a vital role in exposing malnutrition in America and was best remembered for embarrassing cereal companies into providing nutrition labels on their boxes, died May 3 at a retirement community in Lemon Grove, Calif., near San Diego.
Choate, who inherited much of his wealth as the son of a newspaper publisher, was a civil engineer before reinventing himself in the late 1950s as a philanthropist, civil-rights and consumer advocate, and quixotic businessman.
He was living in Phoenix at the time and started a short-lived magazine called Reveille “to wake up the hidebound establishment of this state” and draw attention to poverty and race relations.
As his civic involvement deepened, so did his compulsion to make solving poverty, hunger and malnutrition a greater national priority.
He made forays to Washington as what The Washington Post called “a consultant, a board member, a resource witness, a lobbyist and change advocate, and that rare being, a do-gooder with political savvy.”
It helped, he said, that he was a Republican and had political access to the Nixon White House denied to many other progressive interest groups. Choate’s efforts were credited with helping establish the Senate Select Subcommittee on Nutrition and Human Needs, chaired by Sen. George McGovern, D-S.D., and the White House Conference on Food, Nutrition and Health, started by President Richard Nixon in 1969.
Choate created his biggest stir in 1970 by ranking the nutritional value of 60 best-selling dry cereals and pointing out that about 40 were no more than “empty calories — a term thus far applied to alcohol and sugar.”
His rating system succeeded in attracting media attention.
“He was a pioneer in refocusing public policy in Washington on nutrition and making the connection between nutrition and health,” consumer advocate Ralph Nader said in an interview last week.
