Disney Whores: Mud & Bucks

My mother-in-law has this little trick she likes to play on me: She gets my kids really unhealthy breakfast cereals. Did you know there is a cereal comprised of tiny Oreos? Or little itty bitty donuts? Diminutive S'mores??? My kids receive these for special occasions, like Christmas or, in the most recent case, one's 3rd birthday.

OK, fine. I have a sense of humor. I can handle it. My kids unwrap the box, they're thrilled, my MIL laughs, and I have only one rule: Not for breakfast. If you're going to eat this crap, it will be once your stomach's already (mostly) full of something at least sligthly nutritious.

But I happened to really *look* at the box the other day. And now I'm pretty pissed off. This particular gift cereal is Mud & Bugs, made by Kellogg's in cooperation with Walt Disney to promote the latter's "Lion King" empire. And that's when I realized exactly how manipulative this whole scheme is.

"Kids... You Gotta Try 'Em!" implore Timon and Pumbaa.

"Snack with all your Disney friends!" They wheedle, listing a selection of those friends: Nemo, Buzz Lightyear, Winnie the Pooh...

As a parent who has watched and enjoyed these movies with my kids, I can't help but feel a little, well, used. Nemo, for instance, is a great movie. It's fun, it's well-crafted, and it carries a couple of very important messages: Kids, listen to your parents or you'll be abducted by scuba divers. Parents, trust your child and honor their need for independence or they will resent you and take stupid risks. Whew! That's a mouthful.

Unfortunately, though, so are the food-product spin-offs..

"Look, Mom! Nemo Cereal! Fruit Snacks! Quiescently frozen almost fruity treats! Can I have it? Puh-lease????"

It's not just the marketing that bothers me. It's what they're marketing. A few years back, we were all astonished to learn that over 90% of 10 year olds recognized Joe Camel. Massive public outrage! Lawsuits! Forbid the advertising of cigarettes to minors! They're bad for their health!

And, um, "Incrediberry Blast Pop-Tarts featuring wildberry filling and superhero-worthy “Wham-Bam” star icing" (Here I must pause to borrow a line from Dave Barry: I swear I am not making any of this up.) aren't? Hasn't anyone heard of OBESITY? The soaring rate of adult-onset diabetes in CHILDREN? Here! Have some Scooby-Doo Berry Bones, Sponge-Bob Square Pants "lightly sweetened, puffed, *jellyfish-shaped* cereal" (and yes, that is an acutal descriptive quote from the maker, Kellogg's), Spider Man Spidey-Berry, Limited Edition The Incredibles, Limited Edition Star Wars, Robots, Lilo & Stitch (indistinugishable except by expert analysis of marshmallow bit shape from our own Mud & Bugs)... Sounds like a great way to start the day, hmmm?

WELL WHILE YOU'RE AT IT, WHY NOT JUST HELP THEM LIGHT THEIR PINT-SIZED CIGARETTES? OR POP THE TOP ON THAT BUDWEISER?

And we wonder why so many kids are being diagnosed ADHD in school? Let's take my daughter's breakfast cereal as Exhibit A. A single serving size (described as one cup) contains 110 calories, 60 of them from sugar. That's 55% sugar. If you're giving them a one-cup serving, and let's say that's really about 3/4 cup once you get the air out, you might as well just hand them a heaping 1/3 cup of sugar and a spoon because that way at least you'll be sparing them the BHT and - let me count - four separate artificial colors. Oh, but wait! the box claims it's "naturally sweetened" so it must be OK.

Let's look at those natural sweeteners for a minute: the number one ingredient in Mud&Bugs cereal is... SUGAR. the number three ingredient is... "MARSHMALLOW BITS". Number 4 is "SODIUM HEXAMETAPHOSPHATE," (?) and a little further down we find "CHOCOLATE COOKIE PIECES" and, the mother of all sweeteners, "HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP". All in all, Mud & Bugs contains *34* ingredients, not counting the fortifications. It all ends, of course, with BHT, a fabulous preservative which will in theory make sure it never goes bad, although we often ignore a fact I once heard expressed thusly by organic farmer Eliot Coleman:

"But it was never good in the first place."

I will contrast this, just for a moment, to a sweetened cereal popular among the crunchy granola set: Gorilla Munch. The ingredients are, in toto: ORGANIC CORN MEAL, ORGANIC CANE SUGAR, SALT. That's it, the end. three ingredients. You still wouldn't necessarily want to build a meal aorund it, but at least you know what's in it.

Consider the hype surrounding a popular cookie-like cereal:

"Post® Oreo O's® now tastes creamier! New Oreo O's now combines the great OREO® taste of the original with creamy tasting marshmallows to create a whole new "Extreme Creme Taste" experience that kids will love. Oreo O's is made with the genuine taste of Nabisco Oreo® cookies."

Italics mine. blah.

I know I'm coming a bit late to the whole peddling-to-children outrage, but bear with me. I generally avoid the kinds of stores that sell this stuff, partly on principle and partly on practicality. If I'm going have my own kids pestering me for treats as we shop (and trust me, I will), I would rather it was for a piece of organic string cheese or some roasted almonds or whole-wheat crackers.

A couple of years ago I heard Yale University's Kelly Brownell speak at the annual CT NOFA End of Winter Conference about his book Food Fight: The Inside Story of the Food Industry, America's Obesity Crisis, and What We Can Do About It (co-authored by Katherine Battle Horgen). Just to pull a few highlights from the book:

About 1/3 of the $30 BILLION spent each year on food advertising is targeted to children. The advertising budget for soft drinks in 1998 was $115.5 Million. The annual advertising budget for the National Cancer Institutes's 5-a-day program is $1 million.

On marketing tie-ins with popular movie characters: "The hope is that children will tranfer the emotional attachment they feel about a character to a product."

And in case you need a more authoritative voice, here's the American Academy of Pediatrics position statement on marketing aimed at children: "Advertising directed toward children is inherently deceptive and exploits children under 8 years of age." (Italics again mine.)

And just for fun, if you have older kids, you can send them to the Smart Mouth website, geared to help kids make healthier eating choices.

Now if you'll excuse me, it's time to go bitch-slap Timon and Pumbaa.