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Hello, folks. Dr. Maurice Selby here, medical director, producer and co-host of Health In Harlem on WHCR 90.3 FM and the Health In Harlem podcast. We strive to bring you the most up-to-date, reliable, evidence-based information to help you live the healthiest life possible.
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Hello, ladies and gentlemen of the listening audience. My name is Maurice Selby, a.k.a. Dr. Mo Selb. My name is Reed, and you're listening to the one and only Health In Harlem on WHCR 90.3 FM New York and the Health In Harlem podcast.
And we have a very special program. Actually, I wanted to see if you guys got to look at my proposed title for this program. We don't have to adopt it. I thought it was funny. I was going to call it Cereal, Cereal Shenanigans, but I don't know if it's descriptive.
But folks, we do. Okay, that's what's up. Let's do it. And with that said, we have special guests joining us on the program, Dr. Marion Nestle and Dr. Lisa Sutherland. Dr. Nestle is the Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health Emerita at NYU and author of many books about politics of food, nutrition, health and the environment.
Dr. Lisa Sutherland is the interim president at Jacksonville University and former vice president of nutrition at Kellogg Company. And they are the authors of Sugar Coated: Unboxing the Hidden Forces Shaping America's Favorite Breakfast Food, which will be coming out next month, September 8th, 2026.
And yeah, we got a lot to get into with this. So welcome to the program, first and foremost, and thank you, ladies and gentlemen, I just want to, before we have Dr. Nestle and Dr. Sutherland, before we hear from them, I just want to thank them because they took the time out to join us, to really empower all of us, including myself.
We talk about nutrition, man, that is, I know my limitations, even being a physician, and I really appreciate you all joining us because this is something that I struggle with when we talk about making decisions in the food aisles, especially with my daughters and, you know, the pressure that I'm under, trying to avoid Lucky Charms. Once they see it, it's over.
It's over. But that's what we're going to talk about today, folks. And so why cereal? I guess we can just start there. We talk about all of our food and how important it is, right, in sustaining our bodies, how important it is in our lives, even not just nutritionally, but socially.
Why cereal? All right, I'll take it. I've collected cereal boxes for years. I bought my first one in about 1989 when I had been working for the Surgeon General's office in Washington, D.C., and I was the editor of the Surgeon General's Report on Nutrition and Health that came out in 1988.
And within minutes of the time the report came out, General Mills had a cereal box that said, with a banner on it saying, meets all seven recommendations of the Surgeon General. I bought that box.
I thought it was a treasure, a souvenir from my two years in Washington. And then I bought boxes anytime I saw a ridiculous health claim on them. So I had a collection of cereal boxes with really absurd health claims that a sugary cereal would make your immune system blossom or improve kids' cognitive function. Oh, really?
Or even prevent heart disease. I mean, all of those. I had a book that came out last year called What to Eat Now. While the editor was dealing with that book, which took a very long time, it's a very big book, my literary agent said, what are you going to do next? And I said, I want to do something with my cereal boxes.
And so he said, hmm, I'm not sure about that. And I said, well, why don't I write you a proposal? And when I started the proposal, I remembered that about 15 years earlier, I had gone to Kellogg when this woman, Lisa Sutherland, was a vice president there.
Because I wanted to look at Kellogg's archives to look at the cereal boxes to see what they said about nutrition before the Nutrition Facts label that came out in 1993, basically.
And I couldn't find examples anywhere. I couldn't find them online. It was pre-online. Got it. And so Kellogg had agreed, I mean, amazingly, after Lisa was hired there. When I heard that Lisa was there, I had met her earlier. And when I heard she was hired, the first thing I said was, get me into the files.
That's what's up. I want to see the files. And, of course, when I got there, and this is the story we tell over and over and over again because it's really funny. They said, do you want the good news and the bad news?
And I said, I'll take the bad news first. And they said, well, the lawyers aren't going to let you anywhere near the archives. Not a chance. So I said, oh, great. Okay, what's the good news?
Not expecting very much. And in fact, the good news was spectacular because they had made for me color Xeroxes of the three cereals I had wanted to look at, from the year each was introduced through 2010—one box from every year—which is when this was, which meant All-Bran from 1919, Rice Krispies from 1928, and Froot Loops from 1963.
I couldn't believe it. That is wild. In fact, we even mailed them to you. We even mailed them to you. More incredible. That is wild. So you still have that collection? Oh, boy, you bet.
And we used it for this book. As we were leafing through these things, they would say things like, oh, this is when the FDA did this. And this is when this fad started. And this is when Center for Science and the Public Interest sued us. Oh, wow.
And by the end of that discussion, we looked at each other and said, we've got a book in this. There's a book. But then we lost touch. And really didn't. I mean, apparently, I don't know what, 2015.
Yeah. We've got we've got emails that demonstrate that we were in touch in 2015, about whether we could use images of cereal boxes in a book because of copyright laws. And then we lost touch for 10 years. So tell me. The wonderful thing. I tracked her down.
Oh, you tracked her down. Oh, good. And so that's what's up well I was feeling guilty I thought you know I'm writing a proposal for this we had talked about doing a book together, maybe I should say something to her about this I tracked her down and said hey this is what I'm doing and she said I'm doing it with you.
Got it there we go so not just I was like you're not doing this on your own no no no no no no and And so Mary said, hey, if we get through the proposal process and that works, we're in.
I think we were off and running from the first time we exchanged. The first back and forth. The first back and forth. We were like, we, I mean, we've said this was so easy to write.
The interviews are easy because we just, I mean, it was a great collaboration. It is fascinating. Even reading, like going back into the history. And that's one thing that really struck me because just looking at the development of this part of the food industry in and of itself was really fascinating. Right.
Dr. Sutherland, from inside the cereal industry, what did you understand about product development, nutrition strategy and even consumer behavior that outsiders often miss? Like me. Yeah. Yeah. I mean. And myself.
And I think that was part of it. That was what was so interesting, the collaboration. It was what I learned in my role there that I would say to Marion, actually, this works a little different or this is actually how we would approach it there.
So what I learned actually is, you know, people say, gosh, a vice president of nutrition in a cereal company, but my team, which was a fairly large team, I mean, we were involved from product development to your point, right?
So we want to make a new cereal. We want to lower the sugar in a cereal, right? What does that mean from a science perspective? You know, what does that mean from what gets labeled, right, on the packaging?
Or it could be we're going to bring a new cereal to market. Do we tweak it so it fits the school criteria? Versus having it come out and then having to go back. But we spent a lot of time on what are the claims that we could make based on what was in the cereal. So what are the claims?
What are FDA claims? What are things like? How far can we push the limit, right? So heart healthy is a great example. Kellogg's for years and decades had partnered with the American Heart Association.
Well, the American Heart Association in the years I was there decided that they were going to add sugar to their criteria, which meant that we would have been out of that kind of endorsement, right?
But if you just follow the FDA kind of guidelines around what you can use to claim heart healthy or on whole grain and fiber, we still met those criteria. So you see on some of the boxes we created our own logo right we didn't need the American Heart Association we created our own logo so my team spent a lot of time understanding that and working with the business units to say here's what you can do here's what you can't do.
This is how we could skirt something maybe and that's really I mean I learned a lot about consumer behavior and a lot of about marketing Kellogg—even though different companies own them now they are the kings and queens of marketing.
I mean, I learned it inside and out. I'm thinking of the logo now. Is that the one that looks like the ladle in the shape of the heart? So this one was a red heart inside a green circle.
And I don't know if they're still on or not, but that was we met the FDA claim for Heart Healthy. We just no longer met the AHA claim, the American Heart Association. So we would work on those types of, or General Mills, very similar.
Their team's whole grains right so what do we want the dietary guidelines to know what do we how do we position ourselves in policy right so we then use that there's a whole grain banner that's been on the top of General Mills cereals, for two decades now wow so but this is a this is a really interesting collaboration just because Dr. Nestle and like on the food politics blog and what to eat and what to eat now, your expertise in nutrition Dr. Sutherland's expertise not only in nutrition but, especially in the corporate arena. I'm curious, like, obviously you come from, you know, two completely different perspectives.
One objective through science, not only in generating that science, but also educating the public such as myself, right, on making healthy decisions. And Dr. Sutherland, from the standpoint of the corporate world and profits and all of those things. Yeah. I mean, I've been a critic of the food industry for years.
And we had a kind of unlikely collaboration. But I've known Lisa for a long time. I met her when she was a nutritionist working for Hannaford Supermarkets designing their Guiding Stars program.
And I thought she was kind of smart and savvy. And then she was working for Walmart. That made me raise my eyebrows. But she was trying to get Walmart to do nutrition, you know, nutritious things.
And the, I don't know, we always had fun. And I think what people, I think, I think what, I think one of the misperceptions with nutrition inside industry as well is, I mean, I'm a public health person at the end of the day, as unlikely as it seems that you would end up inside a corporation.
So, so Marion and I, we often say this, we're actually much more aligned than we are unaligned just in our ideology. And our beliefs and our, you know, wanting to change. I just had the ability and opportunity to change it from inside a company, right? Versus from the outside.
Like I sat in a room where, Hopefully, I influenced some of the decisions that we were making around whether it was sugar or more fiber or do you take colors out or how to address it.
So same thing with Walmart. I mean, that's an opportunity to change public health, but through industry. There are small changes. Sometimes they're impactful. Sometimes they listen to you and sometimes they don't.
But we both want a better America at the end of the day and better, you know, better food. I mean, we both want better food. That was a great segue to my next question, because was there a box or a claim or historical episode that sort of changed how each of you understand the industry and or perceive the industry?
I think what I don't think so. I think what I learned from working with Lisa, was how the relentlessness of the companies in trying to market their products. I mean, I always knew the company's marketed products, but what this book tells is a story of we're going to find ways to market our products, whether the FDA likes it or not.
If the FDA won't let us do A, we'll do B, C, and D. If Center for Science in the Public Interest sues us about this, we'll do that. So just utter relentlessness, never stopping, always pushing the envelope, always pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing to be able to market and say anything they wanted to about what are essentially vitamin supplemented cookies served for breakfast to children.
You know, I mean, one of our questions is, when did that become okay? Right. Yeah. I can't really. So, Dr. Nestle, what should listeners understand about the spectrum from minimally processed oats or shredded wheat to highly formulated, like, sweetened cereals?
Well, you know, the cereal that I eat is one ingredient cereal, wheat. It's the only shredded wheat. It's the only thing in the package. I add my own sugar. I think sugar is absolutely necessary, but not as much as gets put into the commercial cereals that are marketed to kids.
And it's the marketing to kids that's the kind of thing that really makes us get involved in this. I mean, you already said that your daughter has a little problem. Oh, my goodness. It's insane. My children had a little problem with Lucky Charles.
You know, and it was something that we fought over and they still remind me about that. So I got something to look forward to or not. Yeah, I couldn't be with you for a long time. That's fabulous marketing. Yes.
This is brilliant marketing. Yeah, and it is. And if you look at, I mean, we tell not only the story of the food policy landscape, because we could clearly see that, but also just kind of American culture, right?
So if you go back, you can see stories on cereal boxes around rations during the war, right? I mean, you know, nursery rhymes when they were popular, contests on the boxes, right? Box top for kids come in.
Different celebrities, right? I mean, from kind of, you know, the early 70s all the way through. So it's also kind of this glimpse into American just pop culture that no other kind of aisle in the grocery store depicts because the boxes are so big at the end of the day. Right.
Or ties to movies. We were saying that the cereal aisle became very boring. Like we actually just we think we think it's very boring for the most part now. But all of a sudden. Oh, really? Well, the claims are gone. There's so many now, though, too.
There are, but the claims, the salacious claims are just tamped down. But for the first time, about a month ago, toys are back, right? Kellogg's brought back the Toy Story. They did a tie to Toy Story.
That, the aisle. They're in the box now? Oh, yeah, a little spoon. Oh, I didn't know that. I can't let that get out. We're going to tell your daughters. We're going to tell your daughters. There's Toy Story spoons in the box.
But that is, you know, I mean, I grew up in an era of when you want to shake the box at the bottom to get whatever the toy was or put your hand down in it, right, to get the tattoos out of it.
And so it's just it's an interesting that piece when you look at the marketing as well. It's not just the claims. It's all about culture as well. How so with that said, at least going back to the nutritional part, how do you balance everything from taste and texture, shelf life, the cost of the cereal?
How is that balanced? And nutrition, of course, when a cereal is formulated and what pressures tend to win in those situations? That one's yours. OK, yeah. I mean, I think what's interesting, right, is so first of all, I don't I'm not the primary grocery shopper in our family.
My husband is and I was in a grocery store when we were writing this book and I came home and I went, when did cereal become eight bucks a box right like just like when did cereal become eight-dollars a box right because last year right last year right and after covid right and so, it is this really interesting phenomena the pricing piece of cereal because I remember when I was at kellogg's it was 2.99 you could get three for 10 people shopped on sale we talked a lot about that.
So, I mean, I think the economic pressures right now on families are real, and that obviously is impacting sales. I think the cereals, organic cereals, we talk about this in the book, right, organic cereals, they're always more expensive than non-organic just because of the scarcity of organic ingredients compared to non-organic.
So at what point, I mean, we both talk about it. I would love to see organic cereal or those without colors, you know, artificial colors or the more nutrition cereals just be the same price.
So consumers at least have a choice and they don't have to make a decision based on price anymore. Got it. I mean, there's a lot of pricing pressure right now on American consumers.
And there's a lot of pricing pressures on cereal companies. Cereal companies are in trouble because it turns out that taking a box down, pulling out the cereal, putting it in a bowl, adding milk, getting a spoon and eating it is too much trouble.
And so there's been a big pushback and not so much interest in cereal on that. And then the companies are under pressure from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who thinks that ultra-processed products are poisoning America, from consumer advocates who think this is junk food, it's ultra-processed, and from GLP-1 drugs, where people aren't eating this stuff, and then the inflation.
I mean, the companies are in trouble, and they're fighting very hard, and that's why the toys are back. Got it. Oh, my goodness. Okay. Yeah. So one of the things, and this is a argument that we've made on this program, there are.
Stories in the media or beliefs that Americans, right, we're not very health conscious. But I think we can make the complete opposite argument in that, you know, when we look at movements like Make America Healthy Again, when we look at, the influencers on social media, even the fact that a major source of news centers around health care, science.
So with that said, we are very health conscious nation. And that's what always confused me right from a from a standpoint of meeting the needs of our citizenry and providing nourishing foods, right, foods that are going to allow us to grow and develop in a healthy way, with the interests of corporate America. I would think.
If I were in a corporation that I want to not only provide good tasting food, right, because that's what's marketable and that's what sells, but things that are going to be, you know, vital to our health as a nation where people can eat that cereal for a very long time and not expire from it because of increased sugars and other things that can be bad.
The problem is that these are corporations that have stockholders to please. And under the current investment system, the only thing that counts is not only profits, but growth in profits.
If the companies don't show growth in profits every quarter, the stock prices fall, the stockholders get really upset, and all kinds of bad things happen internally. So you know I mean I'm fond of telling the story when I went to a meeting at the white house when michelle obama was first lady I was meeting on marketing foods to kids and there was somebody from a big food company there.
Who said I wish we didn't have to market to kids I think it's wrong I wish we didn't have to do it but our stockholders won't let us stop, And so that's what you're up against. They have to make products that will fly off the shelves and sell a billion dollars a year worth of every single brand.
So that's why there's brand proliferation. That's why there's 20 different kinds of Cheerios, of which my current favorite is cookies and cream Cheerios protein. Oh, the protein was thrown in there in recent, like you said, with recent trends. Yeah, that's my current favorite.
You know, and so that explains a lot about what you see in the cereal aisle. They're just desperate to sell them. And I think the other piece of that as well, if you look at the top 10 selling most popular cereals by sales volume in the top five, four are high sugar, right?
So they're like 12 grams or more. So consumers, I think we say we want healthier, but that's not what the data shows, right? So the data shows like Yellow Box Cheerios in I think the year we, it's in the book, the table that we published, they were like three or four.
I remember when Yellow Box Cheerios was number one. So it's an interesting, so why is that? Is it cheaper? Is it just more available? I don't know why that is. But it's this interesting paradigm of we want to be healthier and we say it.
And then the cereal companies or any food company, right, you're going to keep making what's selling, if that's what's selling, back to Marion's point, you know, on profits and margin.
And so it's a very, look, I'm not a consumer behavior expert. But that's an interesting pair. But we know what consumer behavior is because Maurice has a daughter who owns four times. Yeah, right. So, you know, how much of a fight are you going to put up about that?
Nobody wants to fight. I'm the weakling, actually. Not much. Hey, hey, hey. When we're in the supermarket, they don't come with me. I can't bring them. Yeah. Nobody wants to fight with their kids about food. Pester power, yes. I remember that being mentioned in the book, yes. Do you remember pester power? Yeah. And you take...
So the most interesting thing on Lucky Charms I heard this weekend, I haven't told you this yet, Marion. General Hills Lucky Charms has a partnership with one of the sororities at the University of Arkansas. What?
Oh, listen to this. It's great. They're sponsoring them. They even have the rainbow slide coming down out of the sorority house so they can jump on it and go down the slide. That, to me, is marketing genius, right?
It's a population, an age group that didn't probably grow up on it. It's all over TikTok. It's all over Instagram. I mean, the social impressions of that alone, that. I could see the parents getting into it because that's the nostalgia.
Because the nostalgia, because that's my generation, right? Like, those are my kids. So the marketing piece of it is just, to me, genius and unrelentless. Wow. It strikes me that really, like, from a health-conscious perspective, it's all about boiling it down to marketing it as health-conscious.
I mean, even the name cereal, in a way, is marketing it as health-conscious. Because by definition, cereals are grains that are typically eaten for breakfast. So buckwheat, wheat, those kinds of things are considered cereals.
So even the name cereal is almost like a marketing term to convince consumers that it's healthy. Yeah, I mean, we tell the story in the book about, you know, how... How the cereal industry, first of all, argued that breakfast was the most important meal of the day, and then that breakfast meant ready-to-eat cereal.
It meant cold cereal. And that's relatively recent innovation. It started in about 1900. So the last 100 years, 125 years, that's it. Before that, people ate other things. And I really thought that not just when I was a kid, breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
You know, you're going to take an exam, which I am an expert in standardized testing, ladies and gentlemen, as a physician. And that was one thing is like, you know, you got to eat a breakfast.
And usually that would comprise cereal of some sort. As Dr. Nestle said, right, just the ease of pouring that into the bowl and the milk and obviously the taste and texture and all of those things.
But if we can go back, Dr. Nestle, because breakfast cereal began with reform-minded health ideas. So when did it just, you know, explode into becoming this mass-marketed, highly branded product?
Well, I'll be very brief about it because books have been written about this. But John Harvey Kellogg was a health guru in much the same way that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Is. They have a lot in common.
And he was a wellness guru, John Harvey Kellogg, believed that if you ate whole grain cereal, it would solve all your digestive problems. Digestive problems were responsible for all other health problems.
This sounds very familiar, actually. And also, it would stop you from masturbating, which they were very concerned about at the time. I mean, you can't make this stuff up. So he developed cereal. He figured out how to make them palatable, these whole grains, because whole grains are hard to digest.
So they have to pound it into submission before you can eat them. And then his brother, W.K. Kellogg, went on to found Corn Flakes. I mean, they had a competition. And W.K. Kellogg wanted to put sugar in because he thought that would make it more palatable.
And John Harvey Kellogg was appalled. And it had to wait until John Harvey Kellogg died. Before sugar went into cereals, and that's when the explosion occurred. And so that was late 50s, early 60s. Yeah.
It's interesting. When I worked at Kellogg in the lobby, there was a timeline that kind of went around of when every single cereal was introduced. And one of my team members, when I first started, she said to me, come here, I want to show you something. And we went down and she was like, you know, there's All-Bran, there's Rice Krispies, you know. And then she goes, and there's where John Harvey died.
Oh wow I was like I mean I remember that this day and it was, and that's vastly different and that's what we saw in the book and general mills was actually out ahead of kellogg on sugar I mean sugar jets which we don't have a picture in the book I don't think but it's one of the best boxes it literally that was the name of the cereal and it has two little kids flying through the air, with a little, with a little, and endorsed by Betty Crocker down in the corner, right?
By the Sugar Jets. And that was earlier. So, you know, John Harvey dies. And then General Mills is already in the marketplace with kids' sugar cereal. So you have to catch up and get into the game at that point, too. Fruit Loops, 1963. There it is. Yep. There it is.
And then on to the Lucky Charms. And then Honey Smacks. Honey Smacks. Honey Smacks. Honey Smacks, I know, right? And Digum the Frog and Frosted Flakes and the whole gamut. Yeah, and all of this is marketing to kids to get kids to get their parents to buy the cereals. Got it.
Yeah. Wow. So teach your daughter about marketing. Yeah. I try. You'd be like. Or I just don't go down the aisle. We avoid. Don't bring them, period. That's the ultimate. There you go.
But if they're there, then I try everything in my power to it. But then again, it's positioned in other places of the store. So we end up with the Lucky Charms. Lucky charms. Yep. Hey, it was my favorite growing up. So there you go.
And so where are we? Because you said basically it is not as fun. I'm shocked with that because there are so many. One, it takes up an entire half of the aisle, which even when I was growing up, I don't recall there being so many brands, so many choices and all of them with the the mass marketing, you know, attractive labels and the things that grab your attention.
So how does a consumer make any sense of this in making choices that are healthy? And I guess even going back to the economics of this, especially over the last year with eight-dollar, nine-dollar boxes of cereal, make an economically minded choice as well.
I vote for shredded wheat, one ingredient. Got it. I mean, you look at the ingredient list. It's like reading food labels for anything else. You look at the ingredient list. If it's long and complicated, it's ultra-processed. Then you want to not buy much of it.
I know parents who will buy... The cereals that the kids are demanding. And you know it's a kid's cereal because it's got a cartoon mascot on the front. That's a direct signal to children, this is for you.
He's even looking at you, the research shows. And they get the message loud and clear. And there are games on the back for kids. And then their box tops that will give them money for schools.
I mean, there's, it's very hard to resist. I mean, it's really serial attainment at the end of the day. I mean, maybe we'll trademark that, right? To Miriam's point between toys and quizzes and you can interact with the box, right?
I mean, when I was a kid, the box got put in between me and my brother so we would stop fighting, right? Like that was the like, you know, don't look at each other, you know? But it's all of what you can read on the box and interact with it.
And now all of the apps that go with it as well. Box top for education, General Mills, right? One of the most popular ever. It's now on an app. Like you don't have to cut out the coupons anymore to send them in. You just scan it and it goes.
So less friction, much less friction. Oh my goodness. That's something I got to abolish from my memory too. These kids, or don't let my daughters find out. Oh my God, it'll be over.
So when we look at the recent trends, and I'm glad you mentioned the protein being emblazoned on the, because that's something over the last 18 months that I've definitely noticed that shift, that being plastered on many services.
Well, dietary guidelines said that's what we should do, right? They flipped the pyramid upside down and protein is king. And said double the protein. Whether that makes any sense or not, we can argue about.
But, yeah, I mean, that's what sells. Right. Are there any safe or safe from the standpoint of a positive effect on one's health and well-being? Are there any labels or anything to look for on these boxes or in shopping for cereal that does indicate this is a product that is, aside from the ingredients list, which I definitely agree that folks should take time out to read.
But are there anything anything that consumers can look for to say that, hey, this is something that is good for them? Look for fiber on the Nutrition Facts label. And the sugar. And low sugar. And low sugar.
Got it. So none of the health claims, the organic, naturally made. What are some of the other? Well, I don't know. Dr. Nestle's not impressed. Organic, but basically cereals are about fiber, but real fiber.
That's not added, isolated. You want real fiber that comes from food, not artificial fiber. And you have to read the ingredient list and you have to look at the nutrition facts label.
And unfortunately, they're very hard to understand. They really are. But it's worth learning how to read them if you care about these things. But I think grams of fiber make sense.
I don't think grams of protein make sense because nobody is low in protein, really, if they're eating enough calories. And most Americans eat enough calories. Oh, do we? Yes, we do. Yes, we do. Yes, indeed. Yep.
One of the things that you talk about is the balance between, right, what is policy and what companies actually do, especially in trying to make sure that they're staying in alignment with the policies.
Is there a policy fix to any of this? Because I think it is confusing. Maybe we could even argue purposefully so. So anything that can be done from a policy standpoint or that you would recommend, to sort of streamline this process for consumers as far as their decision making and making, in the end, you know, overall healthy choices.
Yeah. Set nutrition criteria for marketing to children. Right. Good luck with that one. I know. I lived that. So, yeah, that didn't go well. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's been that was first attempted in 1979 by the Federal Trade Commission and the, head of the FTC lost his job and Congress passed the law saying, thou shalt not restrict marketing of junk food to children on television, basically. Thou shalt not.
Wow. Anytime anybody has tried to restrict marketing, the food industry goes berserk and brings out all its lobbyists. Yeah, everybody backs down, just as this administration backed down on ultra-processed foods.
And the other is, you know, the FDA has proposed a healthy claim, a new kind of, you know, a new seal to put on boxes. And we talk about that in the book as well. So there's both kind of an icon that would have different key nutrients on it.
And then there's just kind of a roll up. Is it good or is it bad? We have yet to see that move forward. And the administration, to my knowledge, hasn't commented on whether that's moving forward or not.
That's a policy decision that they could make at the end of the day is to move that work forward at a faster rate. Because to your point, you know, sometimes reading the nutrition facts panel or the ingredient statement, it's hard for, you know, a lot of Americans.
If you have a quick snapshot on the front of the box that says either, like, this meets certain criteria or this doesn't. Is a way to help. I mean, that's where my whole work started, like Marion said, with, you know, Hannaford and Guiding Stars.
The whole point of that work was how do we help consumers make a decision at a glance when they get three seconds to look at a product in the grocery store? And cereal is a great example. We heard from parents when we did that work, oh, I now can shop the grocery store and say, you can pick any cereal with three stars on it, but not the others, right?
So if the FDA would move some of that forward, I do think that that would help consumers, at least to some degree, quickly make decisions while they're shopping. Yeah, they're working on two seals. They're working on a healthy seal, and they're working on what is essentially a warning label of fat, sugar.
And so I hear that that warning label is at the Office of Management and Budget, but. You know who knows what's going to happen with it it's hard to tell um it's really all of these things are dragging right dragging well it's probably yep no I was going to say and when the FDA, re when they redid their definition of healthy and sugar, which had not been into it until recently right I mean the comments that were filed by the cereal companies I mean we read through all of the comments I mean you know that it should be 12 grams it shouldn't be you know six grams.
Like it should be not as low as two grams. I mean, it was so interesting, right? So that kind of warning label, like the roll up for healthy with the seal for healthy, it includes sugar and it's going to exclude almost every cereal to kids.
Wow. So, but it's still sitting. Aside from, obviously, the way that it would improve taste for these cereals, any scientific arguments that these companies are making as to why they need that much sugar?
Oh, I think it's time to talk about alphabets. So I'll tee you up. So what I learned that I did not know until I worked for Kellogg's, right, was I didn't understand the functionality of sugar in cereal.
That, right, it makes it stand up in a bowl. So I always use the example of Corn Flakes versus Frosted Flakes, right? If you think about the two, Corn Flakes go soggy much faster in a bowl than Frosted Flakes.
That's a real kind of phenomenon for a consumer from a crunch and just from a palatability standpoint. And then Marion will tell you the story about alphabets when they tried to go to zero grams of sugar.
Yeah, I couldn't believe it. I read about it and that General Mills was going to be making. First of all, I love alphabet cereals because, you know, you could play with your food.
Spell things out. Spell things out. I always thought it was really fun. And for some reason or other, they picked alphabets to go to zero sugar. I bought a box as fast as I could because I was sure that it wasn't going to last for five minutes.
That absolutely nobody would buy it. I was right. And there were two criticisms of it. One was that it tasted like straw, and the other was that the letter integrity failed and that sugar was needed to maintain the shape of the letters.
And if the sugar wasn't there, they dissolved and you couldn't see what they were. Why they didn't bring the sugar back to 12 grams, I really don't know. I think they tried a couple of things.
They must have thought that only people who are interested in using the cereal as a learning experience were going to be buying it. But in any case, it's gone now completely. And that is one of the challenges when you try to lower sugar in cereal. There's the taste piece, which you talked about at the top, which, I mean, to this day, taste is number one for consumers, what something tastes like.
And in cereal, sugar, right from a functionality perspective, it is one of the other things that as cereal companies lower sugar and they take it out to market test it, they also test that piece of it with consumers because there's a threshold at which it just fails and they're not going to lower it any further.
Yeah. So I learned a new term, letter integrity. Got it. I mean, that's the one thing I would have never thought that that would matter that much to people. I mean, and that it would be understood by companies to say that this is something that matters and what it matters and it matters a lot. Yeah. To consumers.
With that said, are lower income families and or communities of color exposed to different products or marketing patterns? And what should a health equity conversation avoid oversimplifying in this case?
The simple answer is: absolutely. At some point, cereal companies realize that Black people buy cereal. And if you market directly to them, they'll buy more cereal. And I guess the best place to look at that is Wheaties, which was very, very, very late in putting Black athletes on the package.
Very, very late. Wheaties was late. Yeah. Very late in putting Black athletes on. But they've made up for it. Yeah. I mean, and I think the best example today in the grocery is Reese's Puffs, right? Reese's Puffs has almost become a vehicle for marketing to kind of Gen Zers of color.
I mean, I think they had a great play on Angel Reese's Puffs when she was on the box, right? Some of the rappers whom they've now put on the boxes. So it's really interesting to watch that particular brand when a lot of those stars would have been on other cereals a long time ago.
And now Reese's Puffs has become kind of the vehicle for marketing to a certain age group and a certain race, ethnicity demographic, right? And so just that, I think, is an example. And that's a cereal that's, what, 12 grams worth of sugar, you know?
So it's been interesting. And to Marion's point, Wheaties was so late to the game. You know, Michael Jordan, you know, I don't know what year he was first on the box. He holds, I think, the record at 19 boxes, right?
And Tiger Woods. And so, but it took until like the 80s, right, to make that happen almost. So certainly I think that in some of the marketing tools, and if you look at the marketing to kids literature, there's a disproportionate amount of kind of, you know, sugary products to children's programming of kids of color versus those that are white.
And one of the boxes we use to illustrate that chapter is the Wheaties Negro League box, which appeared 50 years after the league was at its peak. It was a commemorative box. Yeah. Wow.
So we're going to go rapid fire, some rapid fire questions. Is cereal actually healthy or is it just dessert marketed as breakfast? It depends. I was going to say the same thing. That's what I was going to say. It depends.
What numbers should one look for when choosing a cereal? Added sugar, fiber, protein, sodium, those things. What should we be looking for as far as the content? I'd say fiber because that's why you're eating. That's why you're if it's two or three grams of fiber, it's a low fiber cereal. Yeah. You want to look for seven or eight grams. Yeah.
Yep. Or, you know, I just poured a bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats, which does have 12 grams of sugar, but it has 48 grams of whole grain. It's almost a complete serving. And how much fiber? Six.
Oh, that's not too big. Yeah, so, yeah. Not too big. We need—we need to set up a workshop or something. It's like read the label like a nutritionist. Well, we didn't. I know you're in rapid fire, but like we didn't even get into is it a heavy cereal or is it a lightweight cereal? You have to know if it's a 55 gram cereal or a 30 gram cereal when you get the label.
So it's the system is easily gameable. Yeah. Got it. I sense this might be a multi-show program read. I think that we have on our hands. No, this is complex stuff. And that's where, you know, thinking about it, just making that decision, see why the boxes are designed the way they are, because you have to get that consumer's interest in a matter of seconds, right?
Three seconds. And get them to make a decision really quickly. Right. And processing all of this information that is, yeah, really challenging for consumers. Just the color of cereal boxes alone, right? I mean, Marion's shredded wheat, one ingredient, are in a brown box, which is pretty boring, right?
Very boring. Most of the kids' cereals are red, yellow. So, you know, kind of primary. I mean, they're just, that's what they are. They have cartoons. And they have cartoons. Even Frosted Mini Wheats has Frosty, the little cartoon. And so.
Is granola healthier than boxed cereal? It depends. Got it. I was going to go a hard no on that, but I think you're right. So, yeah, it depends. Yeah, it depends. They're often very high in sugar. Sugar, yeah.
Are cereal vitamins and minerals as useful as nutrients naturally present in food? Probably. They're probably just as bioavailable. Yeah, probably. Okay. And in general, and actually this is a question, I mean, we're not on the everyday tip. It's more of a treat when Zora eats Lucky Charms.
But, I mean, cereal is cereal good for breakfast for children every day. That's something that I remember growing up kind of, that this was, as we said, the first meal of the day, right? Start your day off.
But true or false? It depends on what cereal you're talking about. I'd add fruit and oatmeal. Oatmeal? Remember oatmeal? I love oatmeal. I mean, for some kids, it's probably their primary source of dairy, is my guess, for some children, is being poured on a bowl of cereal.
It doesn't negate the sugar, but I guess I would say it depends as well what the cereal is. I mean, if it's sugary. And what else they're eating. Yeah, and what else they're eating in the day, But a bowl of, you know, Rice Krispies or Cheerios with banana and some dairy.
That could be a lot worse. Could be. Yeah, that's a pretty good start to a day. Got it. Got it. When we talk about final takeaways for what folks need to understand when talking about this marketing machine that are cereal manufacturers throughout this country and the decisions that we have to make day in, day out with regard to our, food choices and how that impacts our health.
What are some general things that someone should take away from listening to this program and even what to expect and look forward to in Sugar Coated? Lisa, you do that. Let me take a shot at that one.
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, especially in the cereal aisle and maybe any aisle is just the more information that's on the front of the box and the more claims that are being made or the more it says it's going to solve something or cure something, I would just be skeptical.
And then just reading the ingredient, the side panel, even if you don't read the nutrition facts, looking at the ingredient list. And just remembering that there's a lot that went into what's on the front of that box.
I actually taught this class in the spring to, I teach at the university where I'm president. And the kids walked away at the end of last semester and they went, we feel really duped and we're pretty smart. Like they were like, we feel bad, right?
When I kind of dug into it. So I think just to realize that what's on the front of the box, you're like, you know, you have to make the best decision for yourself. But there's a lot that goes into that and a lot of money spent on that. Got it.
Marion? And Dr. Nestle, anything to add to that? I would say, you know, the book is about how the food industry markets products, whether the products are healthy or not. If you're somebody in a grocery store, you've got choices to make and not very much time, and you just want to get out of there. True story.
And everything is about marketing, and you need to be able to understand what that marketing is. You go down the cereal aisle and every single piece of it is either on the box because it has to be there or because marketing and most of it is marketing.
Wow. I love. Thank you for that tip. But the more stuff that's written, I'm going to be like, wait a minute. You're going to be like, hold up on that. Back up. And you know it's real marketing when the little tiny print that you can barely read that's the same color as the box has some disclaimer language. Got it. Wow.
Yeah. The disclaimers. Right. Oh, one more thing. Are there any resources, whether they are applications that people can have on their phone that might help them? Understand or filter, right? What is on these boxes, online resources that you would direct folks to, to really empower them in making these decisions.
I don't want to endorse products. I really don't. But there are a bunch of apps that will give you enormous amounts of information, if you hold your phone up to the QR code. Yeah.
All right. There are. I don't use them, but people love them. Use them if you like them. And then one more thing, any celebrations for the launch of the book for you both? September 8th at NYU, Lisa and I are launching the book. Yep.
And then we're going to celebrate Marion's 90th birthday. Wow. Congrats. That same week. That's the big celebration. That's the big celebration. The book and Marion's birthday. That's what's up. We're doubling down. Oh, man.
I was just telling Reed, I was like, I'm trying to find an excuse to get up there. Come on. Actually. Come on. Come join us. That would be awesome. I know. I tried to get them to release the book on Thursday on her birthday, but they're like, we only released books on Tuesday. They only released books on Tuesday.
So your birthday is September 10th. That is incredible. So happy early birthday. And also, yeah, congratulations on the release of the book. We thank you both for joining us. And this is a good time, too.
It was really fun talking about the cereal boxes, the memories, the shenanigans. I guess I'm going to keep that in the title. Cereal, Cereal Shenanigans. There we go. Thank you both, Dr. Sutherland and Dr. Nestle. And actually, if you guys are okay, I think we've kind of alluded to it, but I would like to figure out a way to do a part two to this or something.
We'll figure something out. We'd be happy to do it. It's a really complex topic. And that's one thing I've learned in preparing for this program is just that, you know, we think of cereal as one food, but it is, you know, a really broad category of food.
And a lot of different foods within that category. I guess that's the way I can kind of sum it up. With that said, thank you both for joining us. I want to thank you, Brother Reed, as always, my partner on this program and the rest of the Health In Harlem team. We give you all a shout out.
Also, ladies and gentlemen, we want to thank you and shout you out as well. And really thanks in advance for sharing whatever you've learned on this program with anyone that will listen.
Right. We need you to do that to empower one another—empower our communities so we can make better health choices that lead to longer healthier lives. And as always, folks, this show is dedicated to the memory of Ms. Gloria Thomas. Harlem, take care.
