Contact: Rebecca Oren 203-436-2513, cell 203-285-5961 or rebecca.oren@yale.edu
Helen Dodson 203-436-3984 or helen.dodson@yale.edu

For Immediate Release: Monday, October 26, 2009

Kids Spoon-Fed Marketing and Advertising for Least Healthy Breakfast Cereals

Researchers Release Cereal Rankings Based on Nutrition and Marketing Exposure

New Haven, Conn. - The least healthy breakfast cereals are those most frequently and aggressively marketed directly to children as young as age two, finds a new study from Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity.

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Key marketing exposure findings include:

• The average preschooler sees 642 cereal ads per year on television alone, almost all for cereals with the worst nutrition rankings.

• Companies make heavy use of online marketing in the form of company-sponsored cereal websites and “advergames.” General Mills’ websites Millsberry.com, averages 767,000 unique young visitors a month who stay an average of nearly 24 minutes per visit while Postopia.com averages nearly 265,000 young visitors monthly.

• Kellogg—the most frequent in-store advertiser—averaged 33.3 promotions per store and 9.5 special displays for its child and family brands over the four-week period examined.

• General Mills markets to children more than any other cereal company. Six of the ten least healthy cereals advertised to children are made by General Mills, including the advertised cereal with the worst nutrition score—Reese’s Puffs, which is 41% sugar.

Key nutrition findings include:

• Cereals marketed directly to children have 85% more sugar, 65% less fiber, and 60% more sodium than cereals marketed to adults for adult consumption.

• Forty-two percent of child-targeted cereals contain artificial food dyes, compared with 26% of family cereals and 5% of adult cereals.

• Of the cereals targeted directly to children, only 8% meet sugar limits to qualify for inclusion in the USDA’s Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program, and not one meets the nutrition standards required to advertise to children in the United Kingdom.

• All cereals marketed directly to children — including Cocoa Puffs (44% sugar), Cap’n Crunch (44% sugar), Froot Loops (41% sugar), Lucky Charms (41% sugar) and Cinnamon Toast Crunch (32% sugar) — meet industry’s own nutrition standards for “better-for-you” foods.

More at (two pages):
http://cerealfacts.org/media/press_release.pdf

Related ABC News story:
http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=8913808

From a taste standpoint, most ADULT cereals are too sweet for me.

Kashi GoLean (not GoLean Crunch) has 6 grams of sugar per serving. That's about as high as I am willing to go.

They didn't mention it, but another issue is labeling. I wish that food labels included PERCENTAGE of calories from sugar and PERCENTAGE of calories from fat.