A Surprise in Your Cereal Box?

If you're a parent, you want your kids to start the day out right. A spoonful of sugar for every three spoonfuls of cereal is not what you want your kids to find in their cereal box.

But if you are feeding them popular cereals like Lucky Charms or Frosted Flakes, that's what they are eating. The cereals most marketed to kids are also the ones that serve up the most sugar, according to a new report from the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity. ¹

Cereal companies aggressively market unhealthy, sugary cereals to kids. But most of those companies also have much healthier cereals in their product lines — and YOU should join us to encourage them to promote those to kids instead!

In fact, cereals marketed to kids are far less healthy than those marketed to adults. They have 56 percent more sugar, half as much fiber and 50 percent more sodium!

Even though most popular kids' cereals are still poor in nutritional quality, companies aren't boxed in. They also make healthy cereals that they could market to children, but choose not to.

Encourage companies like General Mills, Kellogg, and Post to promote healthier options to kids—like regular Cheerios, Unfrosted Mini-Wheats, or Shredded Wheat—instead of Trix, Frosted Flakes, Pebbles or other products that are loaded with sugar.
We have drafted a letter you can send to cereal companies so you can reach them.
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Join us in asking cereal companies to make it a healthy one, too.

Sincerely,
Jennifer Harris and Kelly Brownell
Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity