
Robert B. Choate Jr., gave up an engineering career to devote himself to fighting against poverty and malnutrition, died on May 3 in Lemon Grove, Calif. He was 84 years old.
In September 1970, Choate grabbed the publics attention when he testified before the Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs on the nutritional content in relation to the amount of vitamins, dietary minerals, and protein in the bestselling brands of breakfast cereal in the United States. Choate showed that on a scale from 0 to 900, 40 of the cereals ranked below 100 and were therefore “empty calories” which “fatten but do little to prevent malnutrition.” The term “empty calories” is still widely used by nutritionists, PT’s etc to describe food that is of little benefit to us.