"breakfast cereals" news and stories

In an effort to make children's breakfast cereals healthier and more palatable to parents, General Mills announced it's cutting the amount of sugar in all cereals marketed to children under 12.

The company, makers of cereals like Lucky Charms, Trix and Cheerios, said it is working on cutting the amount of added sugar to under 10 grams per serving.

"Ready-to-eat cereals, including presweetened cereals, account for only 5 percent of the sugar in children's diets," said Jeff Harmening, president of General Mills' Big G cereal division, in a statement. "Still, we know that some consumers would prefer to see cereals that are even lower in sugar, especially children's cereals. General Mills has responded -- and we are committing to reduce sugar levels even more."

In 2007, General Mills announced it was cutting added sugar in breakfast cereals marketed to children to 12 grams or less per serving.

As a kid Rice Krispies was one of my favorite cereals largely due to its onomatopoeic spokescharacters: Snap, Crackle and Pop. As for flavor, I never though it was all that great, but I was always fascinated by this musical cereal. It was a treat to pour the milk over the little bits of crisped rice and sit back and enjoy the show.

Apparently Kellogg's thought that kids in the '80s needed a little more stimulation than the percussive trio provided and released a promotional record with catchy tunes covering musical styles ranging from gospel to New Wave. This bizarre excercise in branding starts out with a rollicking gospel number that includes the lyrics, "Waking up, waking up, you and me waking up to that Snap, crackle, pop. We've got the whole wide world waking up waking up." There's also a country tune that features a twangy voiced guy singing, "You see it's downright fun to pour the milk on top to put snap, crackle, pop into your morning."

It's worth going to WFMU's Beware the Blog, to check out the wacky tunes. The last tune is a pitch-perfect New Wave rocker. I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard at breakfast cereal.

[via BoingBoing]

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Wheaties may be the breakfast of Champions, but are you the champion of breakfast cereals? See if you can identify Cocoa Pebbles from Cocoa Krispies and Cap'n Crunch from Kix. Crunch your way through this quiz, and then come back here to share your score and dish on your favorite cereals!

Breakfast Cereal ID Quiz

A new marketing code is being created in Australia. It may go as far as banning celebrity spokespeople and removing toys from kids' meals. This would make Australia the first western country to impose such measures.

The code is a response to a growing obesity problem among children that has been linked to surgery and fatty foods. According to this press release animated characters - like that tiger that use to (or maybe still does) advertise that overly sweet breakfast cereal and that annoying monkey for coco-pops that we have in the UK - will be banned as would the inclusion of promotional toys. I remember as a kid being very excited collecting cut out characters from the back of Golden Nuggets, a breakfast cereal I don't think you can get anymore. Oh happy days.

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Scientists have answered one of the great unsolved problems of the age - they have found the secret to the perfectly crunchy cornflake.

French boffins down in Nantes have looked at the the cornflake’s 'alveolar structure' (whatever the 'ell that is!)  and have identified the factors affecting its crunchiness. They also used a 'pioneering mechanism' to test the acoustic performance of the 'crunch' and discovered the exact sound that gives the most satisfactory noise when eaten. 

Comparing why the Argentine Plata corn stays flaky when most European varieties do not, they found that crunchiness depends not so much on the manufacturing method as on the 'alveolar structure', in particular the 'interface between proteins and starch'. Professional tasters decreed which flake made the most satisfying sounds in the mouth, and which went soggy in milk and stuck to their palates. Terrible things soggy cornflakes. Keeps me awake at night.

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