Last night I was in a grocery store here looking for shredded wheat, one of the few breakfast cereals with no sugar in it. For some reason I was unable to find it. What I found, however, were innumerable variations of sugar coated and sugar infused breakfast cereals, which led me to taking the photos on this page.
Somehow, I've always had it in my head that sugar contributes to making kids hyper, but when I Googled this today the first ten articles that came up were rebuttals of this conjecture. And yet we have more ADHD kids in schools and kids who are given meds to keep them seated and still during class.
The defenders of sugar may have scientific studies on their side with regards to making kids hyper (denying it) but there are plenty of other side effects from sugar, including tooth decay as well as blood sugar issues for diabetics.
Check out all the various ways cereal manufacturers add sugar to our cereals. It's essentially about turning breakfast into candy.
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| These old standards now have competition. |
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| This is a cereal aisle? |
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| Pecans and maple brown sugar. Count me in. "Sugar pie, honey bunch..." |
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| Let's just have a bowl of cookies for breakfast. |
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| Looking for Unicorns? Here's a bowl of good luck to you. |
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| Apples to Apples and cinnamon... that's sweet. |
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| I want my Cheerios to taste like peanut butter cups. Can you do that? |
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| Everybody likes brown sugar, but maple brown sugar sounds even sweeter. |
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| If add fruit to our sugar, that will make it healthy, right? |
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| Let's make sure you can see the sugar. Yumm. |
Here's a scary thought. I have a friend whose brother works for one of the cereal manufacturers. He said they have been testing the limits of how much cardboard they can add to the wheat and oats and still call it food. I suppose they can call it "fiber"...
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If you're here in the Twin Ports, there is an art walk in Downtown Duluth tonight.
And the Superior Public Library is holding its 8th annual Love Your Local Artist.
Yummm.
There's no denying that sugar has become the Numero Uno culprit in the breakfast cereal industry. But those of us who "go back a few years" remember fondly, I would guess, the "arrival" of sugar-coated cereals such as Frosted Flakes, Sugar Corn Pops, and Trix. This might border on nostalgia simply because of the charming advertisements that accompanied these and a VERY few others. In those days, of course, there was precious little discussion and even less research about the effects of sugar on teeth, blood sugar levels, and brain activity. I recall fondly Andy Devine as Jingles on the show Wild Bill Hickok sponsored by Kellogg's Sugar Corn Pops. I also remember "Silly Rabbit, Trix are for Kids" commercial. And Tony, the Tiger is still one of the most familiar images associated with a breakfast cereal today. But, thanks, Ed for this amazing assortment of unpleasant looking (to me, at any rate) bastardizations of the original sugar cereals. Have they stopped making Shredded Wheat? I hope not, and for one last "blast from the past," I will never forget collecting the cardboard separators in boxes of Nabisco Shredded Wheat on which were printed fascinating images and information about Native American culture and history, or as we used to term it, "Indian Lore." Those were the (old) days.
ReplyDeleteYes, the commercial were fun. The ad agency that created Tony the Tiger was Leo Burnett out of Chicago. He created cartoon characters because Celebrities can get in trouble with wife beating, drugs, raising illegal fighting dogs, and other kinds of scandalous adventures. Tony the Tiger and his clan never got into any of those situations, which was especially good for the Brands they represented.The creator of Tony the Tiger died in 2001. https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/creator-tony-tiger-dies-53556/
ReplyDeleteAs for shredded wheat, it still exists. I just couldn[t find it the other night because of all these other cereals. I was near the bottom of my current box, so I stepped into th Super One to grab another...
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