Robert Choate Jr.; helped change eating habits in US
WASHINGTON - Robert B. Choate Jr., 84, a Boston Brahmin and self-styled "citizen lobbyist" who in the 1960s and 1970s played a vital role in exposing malnutrition in America and was best remembered for embarrassing cereal companies into providing nutritional labels on their boxes, died May 3 at a retirement community in Lemon Grove, Calif., near San Diego. He had a medical condition that prevented him from swallowing.
Mr. Choate was born in Boston, where his father was publisher of the Herald and Traveler newspapers.
Mr. Choate, who inherited much of his wealth, 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.
He also attempted, without much luck, to promote freshly squeezed Arizona orange juice to compete with better-known groves across the state line in California.
As his civic involvement deepened, so did his compulsion to make solving poverty, hunger, and malnutrition a greater national priority. He went into Washington as what the
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. Mr. Choate's efforts were credited with helping to establish the Senate Select Subcommittee on Nutrition and Human Needs, chaired by Senator George McGovern, Democrat of South Dakota, and the White House Conference on Food, Nutrition, and Health, started by President Nixon in 1969.
Mr. 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."
To an industry that spent a reported $87.5 million on TV advertising every year, Mr. Choate was not a welcome presence. Industry spokesmen pointed to what they considered flaws in his data. He raised the ante by complaining about how "the worst cereals are huckstered to children" through television advertising.
His rating system succeeded in attracting media attention. One Time magazine headline asked, "Breakfast of Chumps?" - a reference to the Wheaties slogan as the breakfast of champions.
It was not long before nutritional labels began appearing on cereal boxes.
"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.
In the years before the organic food movement, Nader said, Mr. Choate "helped revolutionize the eating habits of Americans. The result was not just nutritional publicity. That's when companies started offering better kinds of breads, not just Wonder Bread, and better kinds of cereal, instead of just those with 50 percent sugar coating."
Mr. Choate was born Nov. 6, 1924. After attending Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, he served in the Navy during World War II and received a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from the University of California at Berkeley in 1949. He became a construction engineer in Arizona, New Mexico, and California, and also made a small fortune in real estate.
About that time, he and his first wife, the former Audrey-Ann Evans, divorced. Marriages to Jean Emery and Jane Choate also ended in divorce.
He leaves a daughter from his first marriage, Karen Holland of Worton, Md.; three children from his second marriage, Katrinka Johnson of San Luis Obispo, Calif., Christopher R. of Arlington, Va., and Valerian R. of Washington; and three grandchildren.
Mr. Choate said the transformative moment of his life came in the late 1950s when he contracted hepatitis during his travels abroad. While recuperating, he read the memoirs of NAACP leader Walter White and decided to dedicate his career to relieving poverty and hunger.
He started a variety of social and welfare programs in Phoenix and hosted a Southwest conference on poverty that brought in speakers including Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Peace Corps leader Sargent Shriver.
In Washington, he became a force in what was called the "hunger lobby," working with such organizations as Citizens Crusade Against Poverty. He also was a consultant with the old Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, where he helped initiate a national study of malnutrition.
In later years, Mr. Choate received a master's degree in education from Harvard University before settling in California, where he started Operation Civic Serve, an organization aimed at directing college-age students toward volunteerism.
"I don't claim to always be right," he once told The New York Times. "But I'm engaged up to my neck in the social revolution of our day."
