I had Frosties for breakfast today. I haven’t actually eaten
cereal in years, ever since I read a great article about it (which I have
managed to dig up here). The article tells the history of processed breakfast
cereals right back to the nineteenth century in the corn belt of the Mid-west
of America. In the article it goes on about how what was once a great idea,
became gradually a bad idea (for consumers) and basically a wonderful marketing
phenomena (which was good for shareholders and company executives). It was a presidential
nutritional advisor that actually made the argument that breakfast cereals
should be treated the same as sugar and alcohol, due to the empty calories that
all three foodstuffs offered. Now, I am loathe to befuddle correlation with
causation, but the two most obese countries in the world are COINCIDENTALLY the
two countries where sugary cereal sales are the highest. There are bound to be
other factors, natch.
What it boils down to is that fact that some damn fine
advertising guys have been on the case for decades. I ate cereal when I was a
kid. Everyone did. They probably still do. Why? Because parents bought them as
they were hoodwinked into believing that all cereals were healthy. Why would
the colourful cereal boxes lie? Well, they don’t exactly lie, but the fact that
the cereal companies fought tooth and nail to prevent a traffic light system on
their boxes is highly informative. Portion size, daily amounts, the difference
between type of milk that should be used all muddy the water and prevent first
time analysis in the supermarket aisle. Also, kids screamed for cereal. All the
TV adverts showed wonderfully inventive cartoon characters doing funny things. They
don’t so much now, but when I was a kid there used to be toys in the boxes too.
Or coupons to collect where you sent them off with a few stamps and you would
get a Tony the Tiger bike sticker set after a month!
So anyway, I had some Frosties this morning. My normal bowl,
which I use for normal stuff, has a capacity for 2.5 times the recommended
daily allowance of 30g of Frosties. So I filled it up. With milk. And the
calories contained were more than a bacon sandwich which I thought I wanted
more but naturally declined as I thought it would be more calorific. Now, I am
not saying that all cereals are created the same, but even things like all bran
are damn high in salt, and special K is damn high in sugar. Ironically, all of
the vitamins that they say are contained all occur naturally in corn and wheat,
but the process of creating the cereal strips them out so they have to be artificially
added back in.
I don’t think I will
be feeding my son sugary cereal when he is old enough.
Edit: shit, I gave him some sugary muesli for breakfast this
morning. Oh well, if it was good enough for me...
Feminine title aside, you should read "Skinny Bitch". It'll all about the horrors of processed food. Frightening stuff.
ReplyDeleteHmmm I will look it up. Thanks lal :)
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