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World-renowned food politics expert Marion Nestle joins forces with former cereal executive Lisa Sutherland to examine what cereal boxes reveal about American culture and food politics.
If you want to understand how the food business works, just have a look at a box of breakfast cereal. Hardly anything on supermarket shelves is bigger, bolder, or more deliberately designed. The fiercely competitive industry that brings us Cheerios, Froot Loops, and Trix sells a distinctly American dream: indulgence and health in one convenient package.
Cereal boxes chronicle our shifting national obsessions with health, ingredients, dietary advice, and American culture. They show us what sells food: cartoons for kids, athletes for men, weight loss for women. And hidden in the history of cereal package designs, we find clues to the corporate lobbying that shapes agricultural policy, health claims, and labeling regulations.
Sugar Coated unboxes the influence of cereal companies on food policy and the power of marketing, revealing, in the process, why Big Food is so good at selling profitable products regardless of their effects on health.
Marion Nestle is the Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, Emerita, at New York University and author of many books about the politics of food, nutrition, health, and the environment.
Lisa Sutherland is Interim President at Jacksonville University and former Vice President of Nutrition at Kellogg Company.
Contents
Introduction
1. Breakfast Cereals: The Basics
2. The Cereal Box: An Overview
Part I. Ingredients
3. Sugars: Ingredient #1 or #2
4. Grains and Fiber: The Whole Point
5. Flavors and Colors: Natural and Artificial
6. Nutrients: The More, the Better
Part II. Claims
7. Overcoming the Claims Barrier: Cancer and Heart Disease
8. More Heart-Health Claims: Ingredient Petitions
9. Nutrient Content and Structure/Function Claims
10. Widgets: Nutrition at a Glance
11. Diet Claims: Fads and Fantasy
12. "Green" Claims: Natural, Organic, and Non-GMO
Part III. Marketing
13. Marketing to Kids: It's GR-R-REAT!
14. Targeting Adults and Families
15. Cereal for All: Targeting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
16. Marketing Philanthropy: Do Good, Feel Good
17. Cereal Goes International
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
List of Cereal Box Illustrations
Notes
Cereals: A Selected Bibliography
Index