Last week, the Chicago Tribune featured a front page report on the marketing of sugar-saturated, nutrient-deficient cereals to kids. It revealed how in spite of a commitment by leading cereal companies in 2006 to market more healthy options to children under 12, most had made very little progress since: still "aggressively" promoting unhealthy products and, what's worse, under fraudulent promises like a "nutritious way to start the day."
 
"Now more than two-thirds of the cereals advertised by members participating in the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative--including General Mills, Kellogg, Post and Quaker--have 11 grams of sugar or less per serving," Julie Deardorff reported for the Tribune.

In the 1980s, 100 million was spent selling kids commodities. Three decades later, more than $17 billion is surrendered annually to this end. There's a reason why, and it's not so hard to come by: children, vulnerable to catchy slogans and enrapturing graphics, can persuade parents into doing things they normally would want no part of. If you've ever watched a kid convulsing by a cereal aisle, you understand how easily cajoled parents are into satisfying kids' desires--even when deleterious to their wellbeing. 
 
Deardorff reported, based on a recent Yale University study, that $156 million was spent promoting cereals to kids in 2008--highest for any other "category of packaged food." And most--if not all--contained high doses of sugar; some up to 43%. "When we looked at the nutritional quality of [the] cereal, we realized it's not just that the companies are marketing unhealthy products to children," lead author Jennifer Harris is quoted. "It's that they are only marketing unhealthy products."
 
The average preschooler, it was noted, viewed more than 500 cereal TV ads in 2008. For lack of diversity in advertising, most kids "would have to watch 10 hours of television before ... one ad for healthy food" appears. In simpler terms, kids are carpet-bombed with unsafe options.
 
The Tribune feature also reported cereal targeted at kids "have a whopping 85 percent more sugar, 65 percent less fiber and 60 percent more sodium than those aimed at adults."
 
Early December last year, USA TODAY published a stunning exposé which revealed how tainted beef, deemed unsafe by public health officials, was shipped to school cafeterias and served to students. The report, implicating corruption and negligence and graft as enabling the galling episode, merely confirmed the obvious: kids--or "stray animals," as some enlightened South Carolina gubernatorial candidate recently described--are not a healthy investment. How else to explain why beef containing salmonella poisoning was recalled, with residents even asked to "throw out" any products feared contaminated, but the welfare of children never factored in as critical? [...] Read Full Article: http://thedailyvoice.com/voice/2010/01/society-to-kids-youre-on-your-1-002523.php