Big Food has outdone all of its great innovations of the past with its new promise to the people: healthier sugar-in-a-box cereal. The world’s second-largest Big Food producer of sugar-in-a-box cereal – a joint venture between Nestle and General Mills – is promising to reformulate its cereals to have less sugar and salt, while fortifying the sugar-in-a-box cereals with government-recommended gluten whole grains and … calcium?
I love the consistent emphasis of this article on “children’s cereal.” Children? It’s not just for children, and it has been that way for a long time. Cereal is an adolescent obsession of the sugar-addicted, too-lazy-to-cook adult set that is consumed with reliving childhood in an adult body. Adults scarfing down childish cereals reminds of those old commercials where a scatterbrained adult fights his child over cardboard-out-of-a-box that pops out of the toaster with the statement, L’Eggo my Eggo.”
Here is a hilarious statement from CPW (Cereal Partners Worldwide) Chief Executive Jeffrey Harmening, according to the story:
Harmening defended breakfast cereals as a low-calorie, high-nutrition option and said children who eat them tend to have a lower body mass index than those who do not.
I can’t wait to the science behind that one! The CPW research center is working hard to conform to the U.S. federal food pyramid-influenced guidelines for central nutrition planning.
At CPW’s research centre in Orbe, food scientists are already testing recipes that comply with the new targets, experimenting with cooking and drying techniques to maintain flavor even with less sugar and salt and more wholegrain.
This Cerealocracy is just another fine example of the government-corporate alliance that annoints Big Food as the Ambassador of Everything Nutritious.
