Kellogg’s is waging a war here over Tigre Toño and Sam el Tucán.
A 2019 policy requires companies that make unhealthy foods to include warning labels on the front of any boxes they sell in Mexico to educate consumers about things like excess sugar and fat. Any food with a warning label — like Kellogg’s Fruit Loops or its Frosted Flakes, which typically contain more than 37 grams of added sugar in a 100-gram serving — is also banned from including a mascot on its packaging.
Kelloggs has been on the wrong side of history from its conception when they tried to make people stop jerking it
Thats why i jerk into the Kelloggs boxes in the store.
Any flavour preferences?
That’s gross, where exactly do you do that so I can avoid it? And what Cereal is it again?
So I can avoid it of course…
He’s the one that frosts the flakes.
Kellogg would be rotating in his grave. The dude was OBSESSED with the healthfulness of cereal (or at least his weird version of it) and his company namesake basically peddles candy in cereal form to children.
Dude thought that meat and flavorful food caused sexual desire and lead to masturbation. He was an anti-masturbation crusader and invented his breakfast cereal to help decrease sexual desire.
I’m no fan of poisoning our youth and ourselves with sugar, but I do smile at such a puritanical legacy being so obscenely destroyed.
Chile started using these some years back. I honestly like them. We also did the mascot ban as well, so no Tony the Tiger, and even Pringles cans have a censored face
The question I have, are sales of these products down? Do these implementations work to reduce unhealthy consumption? Are hospitals and medical offices seeing less revenue? If they don’t actually work, what will?
At least according to the studies, and reports from people I work with and friends, yes, they do seem to work. Here you can read a Google translated article talking about the effects since the law came into effect in Chile in 2016: https://www-ciperchile-cl.translate.goog/2021/05/24/ley-de-etiquetado-evaluando-sus-efectos-en-consumidores-y-empresas-de-alimentos/?_x_tr_sl=es&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp
It’s good to note that another consequence of this law, is that apart from the mascots being prohibited, it’s also prohibited to play ads for unhealthy foods (not sure if they need to specifically target children, or not) aren’t allowed until after a certain hour in the evening, like 9:00pm or something.
We need pics. We’ve never seen that in North America
If nutrition labels bothers them so much, why not just make the cereal more nutritious and less full of shit? It’s not hard to see that there is a solution that doesn’t involve looking like a villain with an army of lawyers to fight a label.
This is one of the few things this mexican government has done right. I think this was copied from Chile, and should be copied in many countries including the U.S. F*ck those greedy obese factories.
If I’m seeing this right and the Mexican labels are just either-or “excessive” labels then check out the way the UK does it – the green/orange/red colouring makes it easy to tell how horrible something is at a glance
The best part is, when you want a little treat you just look for the red labels. Or when you’re trying to avoid drinks with artificial sweeteners.
Wait is that not standard anywhere else?
No, in the US every consumer is meant to be their own health expert. It doesn’t make any sense, but its the easiest way to keep feeding us unhealthy garbage for cheap
Dear god, more than a third of Froot Loops and Frosted Flakes is sugar?!
And that’s not the worst I have seen. Things like raisins are basically flavoured sugar.
But they’re dried grapes and mostly without added sugar. We shouldn’t need to live in a world where raisins are sold “now with less sugar”. Humans spent hundreds of years cultivating eating grapes to be as sweet as they are…
Most raisin Bran cereal (including Kellogg’s) coat the raisins in more sugar! https://www.seriouseats.com/cereal-eats-the-great-raisin-bran-off
The sugar we know isn’t that different. It’s essentially a dried plant too but with stuff removed.
Sure adding sugar is another big issue. But fruits aren’t that great for us either. Certainly better to eat an apple than drink apple juice though.
Actually fruits are pretty great for us, if they aren’t highly processed.
Better to eat an apple than drink apple juice, also better to eat an apple than just about anything from the supermarket that isn’t fresh.
Of course, you still need a balanced diet, and you can’t get nearly all the necessary nutrients from just apples. Still, assuming an otherwise nutrient-complete diet, it’s a lot less healthy to eat a slice of frozen pizza than an apple or a banana. (the apple might even contain less available sugar than the pizza slice - people often overestimate how much sugar fruits really contain)The “stuff removed” bit is more important than you seem to give it credit for. Take out all the fiber and water and sure it’s still the same sugars that are left over, but we didn’t evolve to consume large quantities of pure sugar, so it spikes our insulin and gets stored as excess fat.
Fruit juice is pretty unhealthy, because all the sugar is more available due to all the fiber being stripped out and you can consume a dozen apples’ worth in a few minutes, which you wouldn’t do with actual apples.
Sure, there’s not that much fiber left in raisins either. But in the context of musli they can be combined with whole grains and nuts, so you get enough fiber back to make the sugar less quickly digested and thus more healthy.
A third of the entire cereal mix being sugar is definitely worse than musli with raisins (which comes to about 10g of sugar per 100g), especially considering that a good portion of the rest of the mass in the case of musli is made up of fiber, proteins and healthy fats.
Adding sugar isn’t just “another big issue”, it’s the big issue. Eating fresh fruits is a non-issue, and usually so is eating dried fruits in moderation.
There is a whole lot of things that aren’t fresh but are good for us and better than fruits. Interesting statement.
I’ve been trying to think of things commonly sold in supermarkets that are not fresh and that are more healthy than fruits, and after a few minutes I have to say I came up blank.
Maybe vegetable soup? Not sure if you can get a good soup at the supermarket.Care to share a few examples?
Whole grains, lentils, frozen vegetables, plenty of meats, fish, eggs. These come to mind. In the perfect world I would give fruits a blanket stamp of approval (I know right, the self-importance). But almost nobody I know don’t already have plenty of sugar in their diet, which means fruits just compound that. That’s not to mention that selective breeding has made our fruits unnecessarily sweet (try the most popular apple types after not having any sweets for a few weeks).
Of course though, there are lots of fruits and many of them are great as long as they’re not processed (e.g. smoothies).
I generally just go for vegetables. Getting into them can be tough but once you do they’re a game changer for your palate.
Pedanticism aside, fruits are miles better than almost any sweets. So if you do manage to replace cake time with fruit time, congrats. That’s a huge step.
Now, U.S. regulators are considering a similar policy, because they say it will help consumers make healthier decisions. The details haven’t been ironed out yet — the Food and Drug Administration just announced it is studying the idea. The reforms seem likely to be more modest; the FDA already appears to have rejected the stark, stop-sign-like warnings on Mexican packages and hasn’t mentioned banning mascots. But advocates in both Mexico and the United States say that U.S. regulators should prepare for a years-long political fight.
the Food and Drug Administration just announced it is studying the idea.
Translation: They are bombarded by the food industry to let this idea go, STAT! They probably don’t have time for a (healthy) lunch because lobbyists are sitting on their laps from sunrise to sundown, dictating their version of the law.
I say ban all advertising targeting minors. Any products made for minors must not have intentionally appealing labels.
Unless you want literally anything kids might enjoy to be in a non-descript white box with black text, I think that’s overdoing it. Appealing literally includes having a picture of the product. And heck, even the name of the product can make it more appealing.
The point is to get them to reduce the unhealthy shit to get the mascot back on the box, and warning label removed.
I saw this while in Mexico and really liked the idea. I was then immediately bummed out when realizing almost everything had that label on it and buying food without excess sugar and salt was a lot trickier.
Awareness is the first step. It will take time for people to incentivize production of clean food
It’s not tricky. You’re just in the wrong aisle. Get a delicious mango in Mexico.
You can’t survive on mangos alone for very long.
You can easily live without cereal though, billions of people don’t eat it. Grab some still cut oats and make oatmeal for a healthy breakfast
Yeeeeeppp. Eating cereal in the morning is a very recent invention by American megacorps. Why would you load yourself with carbs first thing in the morning? Eating proteins or not eating at all until lunchtime is better.
I suppose this thread is full of clean eating herbivores and I’m the only one that enjoys a packet of chips or cheese.
I’m happy to eat junk food sometimes. And Mexico has some excellent junk food too.
Same, but man some of the snacks there are crazy strong with the lime and chili seasoning.
I’m fine with the lime and chili, but I’m not a huge fan of tamarind.
I can throw back cheese, chips, hummus, and mango. But when I do I just cut back in other areas so I don’t turn into a balloon.
Buy food that isnt processed.
Meat, fish, vegetables.
Aboid sugar and seed oils.
Fuck everything else. Live a healthy life.
Any food with … more than 37 grams of added sugar in a 100-gram serving is also banned from including a mascot on its packaging
Damn, that’s really good. Sounds a little bit like the plain packaging laws many countries have on cigarettes, which have proven to be extremely effective in the decade since they were first rolled out. It’s obviously a bit more limited, but it’s still a great move.
I was about to ask… Do people actually not know these things are unhealthy?
Some people really don’t. They grow up with commercials telling them that the cereal is “part of a balanced breakfast” without understanding that that means the cereal should be a small part of the breakfast.
It’s also the case that not all cereals are created equally. Most of Kellogg’s most famous cereals are stuffed full of sugar, but they do have some options that are relatively healthier, like their All-Bran Wheat Flakes. And from other companies, there are some actually-healthy options. Australia’s most popular cereal is probably Sanitarium’s Weet-Bix, with just 3 g added sugar per 100 g. And even healthier than that is my preferred breakfast cereal, Uncle Toby’s Vita Brits, an otherwise-similar product with 0 g added sugar. Both Weet-Bix and Vita Brits are high in fibre and made from mostly whole grain wheat.
The poms have a version of Weet bix, too. Weet bix have to be commended for their marketing though, I still remember all the ads I’d see growing up if sports stars espousingvthe benefits of em. And they pump a lot of money into kids sport (do they still have the kids try-athlon series?) Kinda crazy given how marketing around food is these days.
Yeah the poms call theirs weetabix (not sure how it’s spelt). Dunno where precisely it sits health-wise relative to Vita Brits or Weet-bix.
Honestly I’ve never noticed that much marketing from Weet-bix. The cereal I most associate with sport is Nutrigrain, which is a much more sugary cereal (though not as bad as ones like Cornflakes or Rice Bubbles). I recall Nutrigrain being particularly associated with Iron Man races (the weird surf lifesaving Iron Man, not the triathlon).
My packet of Sainsbury’s own-brand Wheat Biscuits (same stuff, but only £3/KG), says 4.4g of sugar per 100g without milk.
As the ingredients say 95% of it is wheat, and sugar is 3 down the list from there, it’s probably about 2g of added sugar too.
Yes, there are many people who do not realize they are unhealthy.
Kellogg’s is waging a war
Yes, they are fighting this, but waging a war? That’s a bit dramatic, isn’t it?
They’re probably spending more on this than some smaller counties would on actual war.
Wait, wait - does that mean we’re going to lose the Coca-Cola polar bear?!
[Actually, they’ll probably just release the Christmas version in a collectable polar-bear-shaped bottle to get around this… ]
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Coca Cola has “just” 9% of added sugar and therefor probably counts as “healthy food” in the US.
So in those places “unhealthy” starts at a whooping 37% added sugar? By these standards, Coca Cola with a mere 9% added sugar probably counts as a healthy drink…
No, it does not start at 37%. That’s just the amount in fruit loops. The article even includes Coca-Cola.
Theres more sugar in orange juice, than cola. (Not much more)
Hint: fruit juice is liquid sugar too.
Orange juice was created to increase sales and use up unsellable oranges.
While true, the difference is natural sugar from the fruit vs refined sugar poured into a syrup and then mixed with carbonated water.
