We already know that Big Food spends close to two billion a year to market junk food to our kids, and we know that the industry often uses means other than traditional advertising to reach them, including “back door” advertising like video games and the rest.
But I was still dismayed yesterday when I left our local YMCA, where I work out, and saw this:
It was an on-site promotion for Kellogg’s new Krave cereal, the hook for which is eating lots and lots of chocolate for breakfast. Here’s the company’s pitch for the “Double Chocolate” variety:
Tame your hunger with Kellogg’s Krave™ Double Chocolate cereal. Smooth chocolate inside surrounded by a crunchy, chocolatey outside. Now that’s some serious chocolate flavor!
Think you can handle it?
The promoter at the YMCA was encouraging kids to pose with an enormous chocolate bar:
And of course, the guy was there in the late afternoon, right around the time when lots of kids (many from economically disadvantaged backgrounds) come to hang out at the Y’s various after-school programs. I’m sure the timing was not accidental.
Nothing new here, of course, but still deeply troubling at a time when kids could do with less sugar at breakfast, not more.
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That is a new low. Thanks for writing about it.
I’m glad you wrote about this too. It’s sad to see marketing to children at places that are supposed to be looking out for their welfare.
I eat this cereal. It’s way lower in fat and carbs than a lot of cereals out there, including supposedly healthy ones like Honey Bunches of Oats, etc. It’s tasty and it doesn’t seem like it’s crap. Cookie Crunch or Honeycombs? Filled with corn and other crap? Worry about that. Not this one.
actually, “bree”, honey bunches of oats only has 6 grams of sugar and is lower in fat than Krave.
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