Have you ever felt a tug at your sleeve—or perhaps, a less-subtle behavior—when strolling the cereal aisle in the supermarket with your child? Cereal makers spend about $229 million a year advertising cereals to children, hoping to get them to beg their parents for their favorite brands. But are they worth it?
We recently rated the top 27 cereals marketed to kids and found most of them had a lot of room for improvement. Only four, Cheerios, Kix, Life and Honey Nut Cheerios ranked Very Good. And an international study that we participated in found that several U.S. cereals had more sugar and sodium than their counterparts in other participating countries.
According to a Federal Trade Commission report, food manufacturers are well aware that the "nag factor" is an important element in marketing to children. But the cereals that are marketed so heavily to kids also happen to be nutritionally inferior to other cereals, containing more calories, sodium, and sugar overall, according to an April 2008 study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association. "Children's cereals have little of the nutrients that we want to increase in their diets, and too much of those we're trying to limit," says the study's lead author, Marlene B. Schwartz, Ph.D., deputy director for the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University.
A groundbreaking report in 2005 from the National Academies of Science suggested a link between the marketing of foods high in sugar, fat and/or sodium and the rise in childhood obesity. Since then, government and consumer groups have pushed the industry to change its ways. Many food and beverage manufacturers have pledged to improve the nutritional profile of items marketed to kids, while others stopped marketing them to children under the age of 12 altogether. These self-regulatory gestures have led to some progress, but more is needed.
That's largely because there is no real consensus for what a "healthy dietary choice" or "unhealthy" cereal is, or what constitutes marketing to young children, so manufacturers define the terms themselves, and may come to questionable conclusions. Kellogg, for example, launched an initiative to improve the nutritional profile of the cereals it markets to kids, but four of the five cereals with "healthier" recipes that we rated still finished in the bottom eight of our new nutritional Ratings.
Part of the problem is the lack of a recommended daily amount for sugars from the Food and Drug Administration. Consuming too much sugar can contribute to obesity, but unlike fat and sodium, there is no recommended daily value for sugars, and thus no percentage of daily intake listed on a cereal's nutritional label.
While the FDA hasn't established a daily sugar limit, the USDA has recommended that the average American eat no more than 40 grams of added sugars a day. The problem with the USDA recommendation is that food labels don't distinguish between added sugars and naturally occurring sugars. Natural sugars can be found in fruit and milk and other foods that provide important nutrients. Added sugars, on the other hand, provide added calories.
CR's recommendation: Our food scientists defined low-sugar as 1 teaspoon per serving, about 4 grams. Look for cereals lower in sugar and higher in fiber and serve them with fruit and milk for a more nutritious breakfast.
—Kevin McCarthy, associate editor
Read our full report on kids' cereals and sugar (free), check out our Ratings (subscribers only), and watch our video (above) to see how much cereal kids really pour in their bowls.
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