"Children’s cereals improve nutritionally; But advertising for sugary items rising, study says" by Deborah Kotz | Globe Staff, June 22, 2012
Over the past three years, cereal manufacturers have improved the nutritional content of products marketed to children, but they have also increased advertising aimed at kids for sugary cereals....
I was raised on the stuff, and it accounts for much.
That’s the finding of a report being released Friday by the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity in New Haven. Jennifer Harris, director of marketing initiatives at the Rudd Center and the report’s lead researcher, said, “They’re not healthy products that kids should be eating.”
Yeah, I'm kinda full up on the Globe.
That’s despite a six-year-old food industry pledge, called the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, to market only “better-for-you” foods to children....
Just like green marketing, we know it is all a $cam, and we know why.
Elaine Kolish, director of the initiative, said in an interview that the Rudd report “paints this false dichotomy suggesting that products advertised to children aren’t good products....
I used to love the cereal ads during cartoons. It was like the cartoon continued through the breaks.
The Rudd Center report singled out General Mills for launching new websites aimed at children for Honey Nut Cheerios, with games like Honey Defender, and for Cinnamon Toast Crunch, where kids can make a movie or watch “crazy videos.” Honey Nut Cheerios has 9 grams of sugar per serving and Cinnamon Toast Crunch has 10 grams of sugar, compared with 1 gram of sugar in Cheerios, which has a website aimed at parents of babies rather than children.
Oh, those aren't the kind of cereals I ate. I ate stuff like Captain Crunch, you know, the stuff that turned your teeth into WTC dust and cut ribbons in the roof of your mouth?
General Mills issued a statement via e-mail that the company “has been leading the way in reducing the sugar content in our cereals advertised to children. We’ve lowered sugar levels in our kid cereals by more than 14 percent, on average, since 2007. Today, all Big G cereals advertised to children are 10 grams of sugar or less per serving, with some already at 9 grams.”
Post, also criticized in the new report for increasing its advertising for Pebbles cereals, responded via e-mail that it is a “strong supporter” of the advertising initiative and “is in full compliance with the guidelines for all of our products marketed to children, including the Post Fruity and Cocoa Pebbles brands.”
The cereal manufacturers contacted by the Globe declined to say why they associate cartoon characters and online games with brands that contain the most sugar but not the least.
I'll tell you why: it create$ an addiction at an early age that you can't $hake your whole life, especially with an ubiquitous candy indu$try as part of the culture.
The Rudd Center’s Harris said it could have something to do with how much children eat when given a bowl of sugary cereal compared to one that’s not very sweet. In a 2011 study published in the journal Pediatrics, she and her colleagues found that elementary school children offered several different types of cereal consumed slightly more than a serving on average of non-sweetened cereals such as Cheerios or Corn Flakes compared with about two servings of sugary Froot Loops, Cocoa Pebbles, or Frosted Flakes.
Oh, now you are getting into my area of the cereal aisle (with candy right across from them? $upermarket really helping you parents, 'eh?).
They were also more likely to add fresh fruit slices to the non-sugar cereal to sweeten it — which offers additional nutritional benefits, Harris said.
The Rudd Center report did find an overall decrease in TV advertising for children’s cereals, but it found that African-American children’s exposure to kids’ cereal commercials increased by 7.5 percent and that spending on Spanish-language TV ads on children’s programming increased from $26 million to $65 million.
It's called CREATING NEW MARKETS!
And what RACISTS are the CEREAL INDUSTRY, huh?
“Latino children are disproportionately burdened by high obesity rates beginning at a very young age,” said Dr. Elsie Taveras, codirector of the obesity prevention program at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute.
It didn't happen to me although I'm not a rail, either.
“This is probably the population at highest risk and the most vulnerable to a doubling in advertising” in terms of their propensity to high-sugar cereals, she said.
But it is $uch $ugary goodne$$ with MILK!!!!!
Btw, where is the dairy indu$try on all thi$?
--more--"
Wow, that was a big bowl of cereal, huh?
Other servings from the BG:
WTF, WHO?
Boston Globe's Empty Bowl
Sunday Insult Series: Amerikan Dining Hall
I might like another bowl of that, and maybe even another.
And you kids should be fine as long as you stay away from the meat.
