Cereal killer: milk, sugar and otherwise hollow calories suggest times are getting tougher
Or, could it be a predatory marketing tactic to sell more cereal? One thing is certain: Big Cereal is always after your lucky charms!
Two months ago, Kellogg’s Chairman and CEO, Gary Pilnick, stirred controversy during a CNBC appearance by suggesting that cereal could be an affordable dinner option for families tightening their belts.
"We gotta reach the consumer where they are,” Pilnick told the show’s hosts. “So we're advertising about cereal for dinner. If you think about the cost of cereal for a family versus what they might otherwise do. That's gonna be much more affordable," he explained.
When one of the hosts questioned whether this message might not sit well with customers who are feeling the pinch in the grocery store, Pilnick responded that it was actually resonating positively, noting that more than a quarter of the consumption of his company’s products now occurred outside of breakfast.
Critics quickly labeled Pilnick as a greedy multimillionaire out of touch with consumer realities. This backlash underscores a broader tension: while cereal has indeed been a go-to meal for its affordability and convenience, promoting it as such during economic hardships risks seeming insensitive. One group even started a campaign calling for a three-month boycott of Kellogg’s products starting April 1.
That didn’t stop General Mills from launching its new LOADED cereal line with a Living "Cereal Rich" campaign that included a limited-edition collection of swag such as a bowl shaped like a crown and a luxe robe with food-safe “snacking pockets.”
Living "Cereal Rich" is about living life to the "filled-est" and bringing maximalism to the breakfast table. Now is the time for maxing out and keeping life LOADED with what you love. It’s time for cereal fans to raise a spoon to a bold, unapologetic breakfast cereal. The “Get Cereal Rich with Me” (#GCRWM) collection pairs LOADED cereal with over-the-top accessories that embody what it means to be “Cereal Rich”
While marketing cereal as part of a luxury lifestyle may be a novel gimmick, people turning to cereal as a cost-saving measure is nothing new.
“Cereal for dinner? It’s a tough reality for some cash-strapped people,” reported the Seattle Times in December 2009. “More people are eating at home in the recession to save money, and meals outside of breakfast more often include cereal, said Jack Russo, an analyst for Edward Jones.”
Certainly, from its early days, cereal has been marketed not only as a breakfast staple but also as a suitable meal for any time of day, evident in campaigns that encouraged consuming cereal when cooking feels too laborious or time-consuming. Anyone who watched Seinfeld in the 1990s knows that Jerry survived on a steady diet of boxed cereals eaten at any time of day.
A YouGov survey in 2016 found that 90% of people like cereal, and 81% think it's normal to substitute cereal for meals that occur later in the day. “In other words,” YouGov reported, “there's little to no social stigma attached to downing a bowl of Corn Flakes instead of a bowl of spaghetti.” A similar study in the UK showed that 80% of Britons had eaten typical breakfast foods as an evening meal, while 32% admitted to eating breakfast for dinner at least once a week.
OK, so many are turning to cereal for breakfast, lunch and increasingly, dinner. But social justice warriors suggest that corporations promoting cereal as a luxurious or aspirational dinner choice in today's economic climate is tone-deaf. Whatever your stance, increasing the intake of cereal means unhealthy levels of sugar and refined carbs for one thing, but also a major source of glyphosates and other heavy metals that poison your body slowly, and from the inside.
That’s one thing Tony the Tiger won’t tell you.
A recent Collapse Life interview with Moms Across America founder, Zen Honeycutt, brought to light the pernicious ingredients not listed on the box. Many mainstream cereals being innocuously fed to children are genuinely destructive to their health and development. Of course, we still live in a free country and choices are left to individuals to make for themselves.
Still, if times are tough, whole foods prepared in your own kitchen are a better and healthier alternative to hyper-processed cereals. Because frankly, the vast majority of cereals are not GREEEEEEEEE-at!
I have no problem with throwing out the concept of some foods only being appropriate for a certain time of day. I also have no problem with having a sizable part of our diet based on grains.
That said, "breakfast cereal" is the perfect storm of bad nutrition. It takes grains and removes the actual nutritious parts, adds a bunch of refined sugars that we don't need, and then people pour on more milk that we don't need to consume and creates a meal of empty calories. To top it off, it isn't very good compared to real food.
Let's look at a relatively "healthy" breakfast cereal. Rice Crispies. Not a bunch of sugar compared to other cereals with only 8% of the calories from sugar. Why on earth would anyone eat that garbage? It isn't nearly as good as a bowl of cooked rice with a little milk and sugar and it costs five times as much. Since it isn't all dried out, you don't need to drown it in milk to make it edible. You also can use healthier options for sweetening. Add a little unrefined sugar, honey, maple syrup, sweetened coconut, or just some fruit. Go crazy and use whole grains that taste better and are healthier. There are many different kinds of rice that taste much better than long grain white rice.
It works for all the grains. People have been doing it for thousands of years. It doesn't even have to be sweet. Polenta, oats, grits, pilaf, fried rice, and more options abound. Just this morning, I made up a pilaf with a cup of cooked rice, a couple eggs, a little Mexican chorizo, sweet peppers, onions, tomatoes, chili peppers, and cilantro.
It is all marketing. Take something that is ridiculously cheap, wrap it up in fancy packaging and sell it for a huge profit when you convince people that it is going to improve their life.
Can't stand cereal, WAY too many carbs and lord only knows how many pesticides are in the wheat. Raising a family #cerealfree ❤️