We wipe out other forms of life all the time, be it by accident, wilfull neglicence or malice. Why not bacteria/viruses. Gotta have some good with the bad, right?
The most interesting thing about this result is that it was achieved thru behavioral change (masking, hand washing, distancing, isolation), and not technologic advancement. We have the capability, with cooperation to significantly alter the infectious disease landscape.
Human beings, when working together, quite literally are the strongest biological force on Earth. There is very little we can’t do when working together.
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.
they suffered in the Chilean market when the labels were introduced about 5 years ago… so it’s no surprise they are going to war. in stead of … you know, making healthier food
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.
Because changing your product, which specifically appeals to the target purchasers because of what you’re changing, is going to make your product revenue take a nose dive? It should be obvious why they’re fighting it with lawyers. Hopefully the laws are ironclad and upheld so Kellogg’s gets their shit pushed in.
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…
Opining about fruit being too sweet is always an interesting conversation to have with folks. It always take a second for their brain to catch up when you start talking about selective breeding for certain traits eventually having negative effects. That’s when you pull the bait-and-switch and mention the evils of dog breeding. Poor pugs/bulldogs.
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.
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.
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.
I think you’re both on the same side of things but had a comm glitch on the word “fresh”. You think of fresh as being totally unprocessed, Wols think of fresh as being minimally processed (I believe they count whole grains, legumes, and dried vegetables as fresh)
That does indeed seem like the hangup in this case, and it’s on me; I should have used a less vague word or else clarify.
To me fresh is anything that hasn’t been processed for preservation (except drying). So cheese isn’t fresh, heat treated milk/cream isn’t fresh, smoked and cooked meats aren’t fresh, pickled foods aren’t fresh, frozen foods aren’t fresh and anything with actual preservatives added is definitely not fresh.
“raw” would probably have been the better word to use.
Also, having thought about my own understanding of the word a bit more in depth, I’ll concede that some pickled veggies are pretty healthy, as well as yoghurt.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
I’m old. There used to be a number of “how many do you do?” campaigns with cricketers, soccer players etc for Weet bix. And yeah, nutri grain has been sponsoring that tournament since the 80s. It’s basically trash though, when it comes to nutrition. Rice bubbles and corn flakes are also fine enough sugar wise, both are below 10%. Not much else going for them though as they are both low in fibre.
Rice bubbles and corn flakes are also fine enough sugar wise, both are below 10%
Oh huh. Both of those are the ones I first think of when I think “sugary cereal”. They’re what I might buy occasionally as a treat. Are people actually buying and eating as their main cereal the ultra-sweet cereals like Crispix and Frosted 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.
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
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
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