Cereal killers now hide behind bars

FOR years and years and years, cereal manufacturers have been stoking our addiction to sugar.

Grab ’em young they figure and they’ll be chomping on Coco Pops and Ricicles and Frosties like there’s no tomorrow, for the rest of their lives.

For me it started with Ready Brek. Why have boring old porridge with a sprinkling of sugar, when I could have yummy porridgy stuff, with smaller flakes and, in its ‘honey’ flavoured version, lots of sugar already, considerately included?

In the 80s they sold it as ‘central heating for kids’. If I wanted central heating it would, of course, have been healthier and more cost effective to fill my pipes with hot water.

But that wouldn’t have been addictive. Not like Frosties. So yummy and sugary and, according to Tony the Tiger on the TV ad, “they’re grrrrreat”.

That tiger was roaring, they might have added, with the energy provided by SEVEN teaspoons of sugar in a 100g bowl, more than the six-spoon recommended limit for a whole day.

Cereal boxes, by the way, feature the nutritional information for a 30g bowl. Have you SEEN a 30g bowl? Enough to feed a mouse, not a person. It’s taken us a long time, but we’ve finally seen through most of their tricks.

And cereal sales are down. Could this be why manufacturers are now trying to woo us by pretending they care about our health?

Kellogg’s is scrapping its Type-2-diabetes-in-a-bowl Ricicles, as well as reducing the sugar in Coco Pops by 40% and Rice Krispies by 20%.

A spokesman said they’ll find alternative “clever ways to maximise flavour” instead of sugar.

Hmmmm. This has the smell of lost profits demanding emergency action about it.

So imagine my surprise – not – when I found a ‘market report’ on the cereal industry advising that the move

“against sugar” provides a marketing “opportunity”.

Another handy hint in the ‘what you need to know’ about ‘the consumer’ section advises: “Ingredients with ‘natural’ image appeal most as sugar substitutes” and “Healthy children’s cereals with appealing packaging could help to win back lapsed users”.

And just to prove that, in truth, they couldn’t care less if we eat our way to Type 2 diabetes, the report advises “Sweet snacks from cereal brands appeal to many”.

In other words, cereal bars loaded with sugar might help to scrape back the profit lost from those who have dumped their daily bowl of cereal.

I feel like puking right now. We are being fed dietary untruths so that while we slurp out of cereal bowls, others are rubbing their hands together and counting their money as they’re served on silver platters.

Bleuurrrrggh…

They woo us back by pretending to care about our health

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