Threat of Dry Cereal Snacks
New research being presented at an obesity conference this week found that the cereals that are most frequently and aggressively marketed directly to American children as young as 2 were also the least healthy.
The study, reported in The Cereal Food Advertising to Children and Teens Score Report, was part funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and was conducted by researchers from Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. It is being presented at Obesity 2009, the 27th annual scientific meeting of The Obesity Society, in Washington on 27 October.
Researchers find that cereals for children have 85% more sugar, 65% less fiber and 60% more sodium than cereals marketed to adults. In addition, companies are spending more than $156 million a year to market these cereals directly to kids.
Researchers analyzed 277 individual cereal varieties across 115 brands. Brands were identified as ‘child brands’ if they were marketed directly to children on television and the internet. They found that preschool-age children in the US see an average of 642 cereal commercials a year on television alone, “almost all for cereals with the worst nutrition rankings.”
Lead investigator Dr Jennifer Harris, director of marketing initiatives at the Rudd Center, told the press that: “This research demonstrates just how far cereal companies have gone to target children in almost everything they do.”
The researchers found that not one the cereals targeted to children in the United States meets the nutrition standard required to advertise to children in the United Kingdom.
These findings are part of an extensive analysis of children’s cereals conducted by researchers at the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity as part of the RWJF-funded Cereal FACTS (Food Advertising to Children and Teens Score) project. The results of this study were presented at the 2009 Obesity Society Meeting in Washington, District Columbia.
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