Kellogg’s Wants You to Think Cereal Is a Vegetable

At one supermarket chain, you can find your Frosted Flakes right there among the apples and spinach

Fruit, Froot Loops ... let's not get bogged down in semantics. <a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery-260701p1.html?cr=00&pl=edit-00">digitalreflections</a>/ <a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/editorial?cr=00&pl=edit-00">Shutterstock.com</a>

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If you’re a regular at the Midwest’s Meijer supermarkets, you’ve probably seen it, looming amid the broccoli crowns and apples and salad greens: a  tower of cereal boxes from Kellogg’s.

Why peddle crunchy, sweetened breakfast grains in the realm of fresh produce? “Kellogg’s believes it can benefit from the better-for-you vibe of products placed along the perimeter of grocery store,” reports the industry publication Food Dive. This, even though many highly marketed commercial cereals are essentially “crushed-up cookies in a bowl,” as Vox recently put it

Indeed, a serving of Kellogg’s flagship Frosted Flakes contains 10 grams of sugar while Frosted Mini-Wheats deliver 11 grams—the rough sugar equivalent of three Oreo cookies. Several other Kellog’s offerings, including Froot Loops and Honey Smacks, contain even more, according to this 2014 Environmental Working Group report.

It’s easy to see why Big Cereal would want to expose its products to the healthy shine of fresh fruits and veggies—cereal sales have been dropping for a decade. But the effort could easily backfire, Food Dive warns:

If the strategy works for Kellogg, more manufacturers may race to compete for more shelf space in the produce section. That could eventually disrupt the better-for-you appeal the perimeter of the store originally had, and the plan could backfire for all manufacturers that migrate packaged food brands there.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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