The UK also banned ads that targeted children for cereal above a certain sugar content. The cereal makers protested, but in the end, they simply reduced the amount of sugar in their products to just below the allowed threshold, continued to advertise as before and sales were unaffected.
That sounds like a great success! It should be easier, politically, to gradually lower the specified amount of sugar in the regulation, now the regulation already exists.
I assume its suicidal for one company to make their product less sugary when kids want the calorie bomb tastier ones. This decision made the playground equal.
Anecdote my childhood… my mom always did the shopping. One day my dad takes me and when it comes time to get a cereal I pick Cookie Crisp, because YOLO I’m not going to get this opportunity again!
We get home. My mom sees I selected the cookie cereal and yells at us. We should both know better!
She wanted to see Fruit Loops, our commonly purchased cereal.
I was only like, eight, but read all the little words in the white box and their amounts. They were practically the same.
Didn’t matter. Into the trash the box went.
In her head it was no better than Chips A’hoy crushed up in a bowl. Cookies! For breakfast!
The Fruit Loops however, we’re clearly some healthy option, because, you know, FRUIT.
My mom is not dumb at all, but seemingly never put an ounce of thought into this.
So I’m torn that everyone should know they’re all sugar, and I have a clear example of people just not ever really considering it.
It Britain it's common for there to be "traffic light labelling" on processed food. It makes the nutritional value of these products very obvious, as it's facing you on the shelf.
Although this article says it's less useful than I thought, and might be replaced with something else. (Though it's a food industry publication.)
It's easy to understand why the kids like them: they are full of sugar. Hard to damn a kid for that. What is easy to damn are the parents that relent to the tantrums that do the providing/enabling. It's also easy for young kids to make a bowl for themselves without needing any parental assistance. The kid loves that, and frankly, so do the parents that are buying it if it allows them to sleep in or pay attention that much longer to their social feeds.
> so do the parents that are buying it if it allows them to sleep in or pay attention that much longer to their social feeds.
Man, what an uncharitable take. I bet they also like that the kid is learning how to prepare food for themselves independently. Or that they have time to do something like make themselves breakfast before dropping off at school and going to work. Further, I bet a lot of these parents also aren't as nutritionally educated as the people in this thread seem to be (for a lot of consumers "healthy" and "fat free" are interchangeable).
The "adult" cereals have the same advantages, with a lot less sugar.
My parents would only buy the relatively plain ones -- Weetabix, Shredded Wheat and so on.
The first time we went to the USA I was 12. We bought colourful cereal for the novelty of it, but the next morning I could barely eat it. It was insanely sweet! (Presumably with HFCS, which I wouldn't have experienced before.) Unsurprisingly, there was no pressure from my parents to finish the bowl, or the rest of the box.
Meh. I didn't say that all parents do this because of that reasoning. I also didn't attempt to say that some do it for that reason. You can't deny that it is true for some while I will stipulate it's not all nor the sole reason.
> I bet they also like that the kid is learning how to prepare food for themselves independently.
Around the world, from what I've noticed, you can also find the plain old' actual cereals. You know, wheat, corn, etc. based stuff that's not full of sugar.
A kid can definitely learn how to prepare their own food using that :-)
I wasn’t allowed sugary cereals as a kid, so let me weigh in as an adult: sweet cereals just taste good to most people. We’re hard-wired to enjoy sugary food.
People have various intelligence and various education. Some do not understand nutrition, and assume naively that garbage would not be sold as food, especially for kids.
Spain just barred cereal makers from advertising to kids. For a reason