The Breakfast Cereal Scam

Yale Study Finds the Least Healthy Cereal is Most Marketed to Kids

Nov 10, 2009

Getting kids to eat a healthy breakfast has never been harder, with the least nutritious breakfast cereals heavily marketed to children as young as two years of age.

Every parent wants the best for their kids, but when it comes to the daily food debates where a parent wants nutrition and the child wants sugary taste, guess who often wins? The companies selling processed foods, of course. A recent Yale study found that the average preschooler sees 642 cereal commercials on TV each year – and that parents may not realize that children's breakfast cereals have nearly twice the sugar and half again more sodium than those marketed to adults.

Healthy Cereal Doesn't Come in These Boxes

According to researchers at Yale, who examined not only the contents of cereal boxes but also the marketing targeted at children and parents, the least healthy cereals on grocery store shelves are the ones being targeted the most forcefully at kids.

Jennifer Harris, the lead author of the study, has been quoted as comparing sugary breakfast cereals to the nutritional value of a chocolate doughnut. "A doughnut probably has a little less fibre," she is quoted as saying in a Toronto Star article, " but it's not much less healthy than the sugared cereals."

Compared to cereals marketed to adults – which contain plenty of sugar, flavorings, and sodium all on their own – children's cereals have 85% more sugar, 65% less fiber, and 60% more sodium. And children who eat sugared cereals are far more likely to go back for a second bowl than those who eat "adult" cereals or a homemade breakfast.

Most of these cereals come from General Mills, Kellogg's, and Post Cereals – three of the brands that spend, in total, $156 million each year in children's television advertising.

Worse yet, most of these cereals are marked with the "better-for-you" Smart Choices label – a logo that obvious means very little.

What About Genuinely Healthy Breakfast Cereal?

For people interested in healthy breakfast cereals, the best options don't come out of a box at all. Homemade oatmeal – made by boiling oats for 10-15 minutes rather than from instant packages – is high in fiber and can be sweetened to taste with fruit, raisins, nuts, maple syrup, and other natural flavors rather than overloading the bowl with sugar.

Homemade granola is another healthy cereal choice – making it at home ensures that there's nothing in there that isn't kid-safe and parent-approved, and allows parents to control the amount of sugar and fiber their kids are getting.

Breakfast is important, and a healthy breakfast can make all the difference between a kid who will sit through a day at school and learn, and one who is too antsy on a sugar high to focus or stay at his desk.

The copyright of the article The Breakfast Cereal Scam in Food Facts is owned by Victoria Anisman-Reiner. Permission to republish The Breakfast Cereal Scam in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.