Health and Fitness Express
How sweet it is
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Health and Fitness Express |
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How sweet it is |
November 2004
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The Health and Fitness Express contains the random and organised thoughts of John Miller |
QUIZ What do Bart Simpson, Ian Thorpe, Garfield, Toucan Sam and Coco the Monkey have in common? Don't know? Well read on and all will be revealed.
A few months ago I said I was going to devote a newsletter to Coco Pops, but what with going away and all that I ran out of time. However a spate of TV adverts for breakfast biscuits of one kind or another prompts me to put keystrokes to screen.
In previous editions I've outlined what a junk food is. In case you missed it click here.
But back to Coco Pops. This is the breakfast cereal that according to the packet and the TV advertising is just soooooo good for you, your children and grandchildren
THAT'S THE WAY THE COCO POPS According to the blurb on the packet it's 'more than just a great chocolate taste'.
'You know your kids love the delicious chocolate taste, but did you know all about the other good things that Kellogg's Coco pops have to offer
● no artificial colours ● no preservatives ● B vitamins ● Vitamin C ● Iron ● Calcium ● zink and folate ● carbohydrates for energy
Important as part of a balanced diet'
What they don't tell you on the packet is that the stuff inside is loaded with sugar. In fact, out of every 100 grams of the stuff, 37 grams are sugar. It's a very expensive (and for Kellogg a lucrative) way of getting sugar into young bodies and perverting young tastebuds to the high sugar way of life, for life.
Maybe you'd be better off eating Nutrigrain - the breakfast food of champions - it's only got a 32% sugar content.
Whilst by law this statistic has to be printed somewhere on the packet, not surprisingly it's not heralded as one of the positive inducements for parents to purchase the stuff. It's hidden away where all except the most discerning of consumers will notice it. The kids see Coco Monkey long before a parent sees 37% sugar and puts on a song and dance until the shop weary parent pulls it off the shelf and dumps it into the trolley.
And the kids do that with all the other high sugar breakfast biscuits, attracted first by their addiction to sugar, then reinforced by TV advertising with greedy sports stars and cartoon character designers, then by inducements - like pedometers (for goodness sake), or CDs, or a chance at a lottery draw for some useless bauble.
An admission When it comes to sponsorship I'm not as pure as the driven snow. In a past life I was responsible for the sponsorship of the Daily Physical Education Program by Nabisco. I'm currently member of the Australian Council for Health, Physical Education and Recreation which, much to my chagrin, receives a backhander from Kellogg for it's endorsement of the kids health and fitness program
AND THERE'S MORE If you thought that 37% sugar was going a bit too far, the nutritionists down at Kellogg have another think in store for you. They've just come up with a mutant form of Coco Pops, called Coco Puffs. At 53% sugar it goes to the top of the added sugar class for Australian breakfast biscuits. Well done Kellogg.
Folks, this is where the food technology profession meets Madison Avenue. (Sounds good doesn't it - 'food technologist'. Sort of gives a bit more status to the profession that spends its time working out how many different ways and in how many different shapes and different colours you can make biscuits out of flour, sugar and water!)
As a profession it's been done over, good and proper. At the breakfast biscuit factories the design of the next new product is intimately connected with the brand and the marketing strategy. In fact it's a pretty safe bet that the next new breakfast product you see on the shelves will be made specifically to cash in on the latest big screen cartoon character in town.
Madison Avenue knows for sure that if you get some wheat, mill the stuffing out of it, mix it with sugar and/or fat and then stick it in an eye catching packet you've got a product that will sell like hot cakes! I reckon the people who go about the job of actually designing the stuff inside the packet must have trouble lying straight in bed.
I presume that all the products listed below are designed by nutritionists (correction, food technologists). If the best they can do is recommend that the baker throw in a few vitamins and minerals, then 'best' is not good enough! Great that some of the products don't contain preservatives - but that's probably because there's little worth preserving!
And as for the greedy sports stars, there aren't many out there lining up to take money from the lambs fry, brussel sprout, or tripe producers ... That would be asking too much! Just biscuits, chips and sweetened aerated water. Just junk!
In the listing below I make one recommendation; don't eat biscuits for breakfast. To advise otherwise would be as good as suggesting you dine on a bush biscuit, or if you really wanted a carbohydrate energy boost, a packet of Tim Tam's. If you're going to have a cereal, choose an unrefined cereal like oats, cracked wheat or brown rice. (Half the world has brown rice for breakfast. There's nothing unusual about that,) Don't be conned into thinking that a biscuit is a cereal. It isn't.
If you want a decent breakfast you can't go past fruit and vegetables with the addition of a bit of protein and fat. Or consider making your breakfast look more like your evening meal. Have a cooked breakfast - and it's only tradition that has developed the mind set that the words 'cooked' and 'breakfast' mean bacon and eggs. Would you eat bacon and eggs for dinner? Eat a decent breakfast. If you're strapped for time, knock up a bubble and squeak from last night's left overs. If it's good enough for tea it's good enough for breakfast.
Breakfast biscuits are a convenience food. If you get up late, you can down a bowl of cereal and be out the door in a couple of minutes. You wouldn't eat like that for your evening meal, so why subject your body to that sort of food for the first meal of the day? All it does is give you an initial spike in blood sugar levels, leaving you feeling tired, hungry and depressed a few hours later.
Go the high white flour-based starch meal for every meal for 40 years and is it any wonder why there is an epidemic of type 2 diabetes? And if you don't burn off the surplus energy (the way the athletes in the adverts do), is there any wonder why we're all getting fatter. Eat from the top of the Hourglass.
If you are to avoid the roller coaster ride of high and low blood sugar level, your body needs some protein and fat for most meals. I see some people who are eating very little fat and protein during the day. In particular they think that if they have some fat for breakfast they'll die. The body needs something like 20% or more of its daily food intake in the form of fat. If it doesn't get it you miss out on the fat soluble vitamins for one thing, and you run the risk of becoming depressed for another.
It's advertising and culture, or more precisely the Kellogification and Tip Topification of our diets that has us presume that a bowl of breakfast biscuits and a slice of toast constitutes a decent breakfast. It goes hand in hand with the Coca Colonization of the world as far as food trends go.
Why bring kids up to think that eating biscuits and toast for breakfast is the best way to start the day? Why would you eat them yourself? It's a lazy food plan.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, the fast food chains are but the tip of a very large iceberg of junk food manufacturers and purveyors. Just wade through the shelves of your local supermarket to see who the biggest junk food manufacturers and distributors are. You will know the manufacturers by their ability to fill up a whole row of shelving, by themselves, from top to bottom.
I don't recommend any of the breakfast biscuits listed below. If I eat any thing it's the occasional bowl of unrefined, plain, common or garden, ordinary, everyday, rolled oats. Covered in fruit, yoghurt, psyllium husk, flax seed oil and some juice they make a terrific breakfast. They come in a plastic bag and cost about $1.40 a Kg.
I've divided the list into 6 categories based on their sugar content.
● low sugar - <5gms/100 gms of product ● Not so low sugar - 5 - 9gms/100gms ● High sugar - 10 - 19gms/100gms ● Very high sugar - 20 - 29gms/100gms ● Extremely high sugar - 30 - 39gms/100gms ● Dreadfully high sugar - 40 - 49gms/100gms ● Unbelievably high sugar - >50gms/100gms
The figures have been rounded off, up or down as Excel is wont to do.
No marks for guessing which company has the largest proportion of biscuits in the dreadfully high and unbelievably high classifications.
* I picked up a couple of empty packets of Nesquick and Fitness at a Nestles promotion in Vienna so I guess they will wend their way to the Antipodes in due course. ** I haven't seen Honey Smacks in Australia but they're probably on the way. Tell your kids to watch out for them.
HOW SWEET IT IS In the world of brand marketing and convenience (junk) food, it's interesting to reflect on what the Kellogg company says about itself.
CONVENIENCE FOOD 'With 2003 sales of nearly $9 billion, Kellogg Company is the world's leading producer of cereal and a leading producer of convenience foods, including cookies, crackers, toaster pastries, cereal bars, frozen waffles and meat alternatives.'
Yep, sure is convenience food. Convenience food, fast food, junk food, take your pick!
Nope, it's not cereal. Cereal is the raw ingredient at the front end of the manufacturing process, not the biscuit that comes out as the finished product. Cereal is a grain that contains the husk and endosperm. A biscuit is flour, mixed with fat and sugar.
GREAT TASTE, HIGH QUALITY 'Founded in 1906, Kellogg produces great-tasting, high-quality foods, marketed in more than 160 countries. Brands include Apple Jacks®, Kellogg’s Corn Flakes®, Corn Pops®, Froot Loops®, Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes®, Mini-Wheats®, Rice Krispies®, Special K®, Eggo®, Pop-Tarts®, and Nutri-Grain®. Kellogg™ icons such as Tony the Tiger™ and Snap! Crackle! Pop!™ are among the most recognized characters in advertising.'
Yep, just about any food tastes good if it's laced with sugar. As for the quality, I'm not sure where Eggo ranks on the quality food hit parade. And as the iconic status of Tony the Tiger? It probably ranks on a par with that of George W Bush.
High quality? Don't know about that. Can anything that you make when you mix flour and water together be called 'high quality'. My mother used to do it and called it either paste or play dough!
BRANDING 'The world's greatest brands. Life's
sweetest moments.' Yep, if you're going to make a fortune, create a brand and start marketing like crazy. The product will look after itself. And if you get the branding right, you'll probably have to beat customers away with a stick. That's the secret of Kellogg's $9B a year business. It's the branding process that they turned into an art form. It's the model copied so successfully by others during the 20th Century and more recently picked up by Richard Branson.
YOU BE THE JUDGE I've plucked the last word off the Kellogg website from Kellogg Chairman and CEO, Carlos M (Gutz) Gutierrez. 'We want people to know us for our commitment to their wellbeing, as well as for high quality wholesome foods.'
THE HOURGLASS DIET If you'd like a copy of my ebook, The Hourglass Diet just send me an email request. Among other things it contains a description of the thickshake from heaven, something that will certainly give your breakfast eating routine a good shake up. If you want a copy of the ebook, do
me a favour and send the request
from a private email address. Don't ask me to send the book to a
corporate or Government Department email address because the book will
probably be trapped at your gateway and you'll get upset and think I'm an
incompetent. To open it you'll need to download and install the DNL reader
from www.desktopauthor.com In the meantime stay tuned, highly tuned.
John Miller
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HOW SWEET IT IS
QUIZ What do Bart Simpson, Ian Thorpe, Garfield, Toucan Sam and Coco the Monkey have in common? Don't know? Well read on and all will be revealed.
A few months ago I said I was going to devote a newsletter to Coco Pops, but what with going away and all that I ran out of time. However a spate of TV adverts for breakfast biscuits of one kind or another prompts me to put keystrokes to screen.
In previous editions I've outlined what a junk food is. In case you missed that one, among other things, here are a few junk food definitions - 1. It's food that's been through the mill, the oven or, in the case of the rissole, the piece of fish and the potato, the fat bath. 2. It’s refined flour that contains over 1000Kj/100gms. Immediately that captures the garbohydrates; - bread, pasta, breakfast biscuits, sweet biscuits, dry biscuits and cake. 3. It’s food that has been denatured and lacks living enzymes. That's why rats will eat the box first! 4. It's food containing empty calories, that fill up the stomach but fail to nourish the cells of the body. 5. It’s food that’s loaded to the gills with food additives – preservatives, flavourings, colourings, emulsifiers, surfactants, thickeners … At last count there were over 4000 additives in our food. 6. It’s food with added sugar, designed to increase consumption through an appeal to the taste buds. That's why we're getting fatter. Love the taste, eat more. 7. It’s food that comes in gaudy packets and wrappers, in bottles, tins, cardboard boxes, cellophane and plastic bags. . 8. It’s food that comes with the endorsements of world famous nutritional experts like Pat Rafter, Delta Goodrem, David Beckam, Ian Thorpe and a host of sports stars as long as your arm. 9. It’s food which through the strategic use of imagery and colour is marketed to fools and children as being nutritious and wholesome. 10. It's food that is promoted by association with children's comic figures; including such luminaries of the nutrition world as Bart Simpson, Coco the Monkey, Toucan Sam and Garfield the cat. 11. It's food which is less important in the eyes of the manufacturer than the brand. 12. It's food of doubtful quality that's marketed in association with wholesome activities, particularly physical activity and other healthful pastimes. 13. It's food that's euphemistically labelled 'convenience food'. Convenience food, fast food, junk food - all pretty much the same. Strange that you never hear a piece of fresh fruit referred to as a convenience food! It's in the manufacturing process that the distinction is created.
But back to Coco Pops. This is the breakfast cereal that according to the packet and the TV advertising is just soooooo good for you, your children and grandchildren
THAT'S THE WAY THE COCO POPS According to the blurb on the packet it's 'more than just a great chocolate taste'.
'You know your kids love the delicious chocolate taste, but did you know all about the other good things that Kellogg's Coco pops have to offer
● no artificial colours ● no preservatives ● B vitamins ● Vitamin C ● Iron ● Calcium ● zink and folate ● carbohydrates for energy
Important as part of a balanced diet'
What they don't tell you on the packet is that the stuff inside is loaded with sugar. In fact, out of every 100 grams of the stuff, 37 grams are sugar. It's a very expensive (and for Kellogg a lucrative) way of getting sugar into young bodies and perverting young tastebuds to the high sugar way of life, for life.
Maybe you'd be better off eating Nutrigrain - the breakfast food of champions - it's only got a 32% sugar content.
Whilst by law this statistic has to be printed somewhere on the packet, not surprisingly it's not heralded as one of the positive inducements for parents to purchase the stuff. It's hidden away where all except the most discerning of consumers will notice it. The kids see Coco Monkey long before a parent sees 37% sugar and puts on a song and dance until the shop weary parent pulls it off the shelf and dumps it into the trolley.
And the kids do that with all the other high sugar breakfast biscuits, attracted first by their addiction to sugar, then reinforced by TV advertising with greedy sports stars and cartoon character designers, then by inducements - like pedometers (for goodness sake), or CDs, or a chance at a lottery draw for some useless bauble.
An admission When it comes to sponsorship I'm not as pure as the driven snow. In a past life I was responsible for the sponsorship of the Daily Physical Education Program by Nabisco. I'm currently member of the Australian Council for Health, Physical Education and Recreation which, much to my chagrin, receives a backhander from Kellogg for it's endorsement of the kids health and fitness program
AND THERE'S MORE If you thought that 37% sugar was going a bit too far, the nutritionists down at Kellogg have another think in store for you. They've just come up with a mutant form of Coco Pops, called Coco Puffs. At 53% sugar it goes to the top of the added sugar class for Australian breakfast biscuits. Well done Kellogg.
Folks, this is where the food technology profession meets Madison Avenue. (Sounds good doesn't it - 'food technologist'. Sort of gives a bit more status to the profession that spends its time working out how many different ways and in how many different shapes and different colours you can make biscuits out of flour, sugar and water!)
As a profession it's been done over, good and proper. At the breakfast biscuit factories the design of the next new product is intimately connected with the brand and the marketing strategy. In fact it's a pretty safe bet that the next new breakfast product you see on the shelves will be made specifically to cash in on the latest big screen cartoon character in town.
Madison Avenue knows for sure that if you get some wheat, mill the stuffing out of it, mix it with sugar and/or fat and then stick it in an eye catching packet you've got a product that will sell like hot cakes! I reckon the people who go about the job of actually designing the stuff inside the packet must have trouble lying straight in bed.
I presume that all the products listed below are designed by nutritionists (correction, food technologists). If the best they can do is recommend that the baker throw in a few vitamins and minerals, then 'best' is not good enough! Great that some of the products don't contain preservatives - but that's probably because there's little worth preserving!
And as for the greedy sports stars, there aren't many out there lining up to take money from the lambs fry, brussel sprout, or tripe producers ... That would be asking too much! Just biscuits, chips and sweetened aerated water. Just junk!
In the listing below I make one recommendation; don't eat biscuits for breakfast. To advise otherwise would be as good as suggesting you dine on a bush biscuit, or if you really wanted a carbohydrate energy boost, a packet of Tim Tam's. If you're going to have a cereal, choose an unrefined cereal like oats, cracked wheat or brown rice. (Half the world has brown rice for breakfast. There's nothing unusual about that,) Don't be conned into thinking that a biscuit is a cereal. It isn't.
If you want a decent breakfast you can't go past fruit and vegetables with the addition of a bit of protein and fat. Or consider making your breakfast look more like your evening meal. Have a cooked breakfast - and it's only tradition that has developed the mind set that the words 'cooked' and 'breakfast' mean bacon and eggs. Would you eat bacon and eggs for dinner? Eat a decent breakfast. If you're strapped for time, knock up a bubble and squeak from last night's left overs. If it's good enough for tea it's good enough for breakfast.
Breakfast biscuits are a convenience food. If you get up late, you can down a bowl of cereal and be out the door in a couple of minutes. You wouldn't eat like that for your evening meal, so why subject your body to that sort of food for the first meal of the day? All it does is give you an initial spike in blood sugar levels, leaving you feeling tired, hungry and depressed a few hours later.
Go the high white flour-based starch meal for every meal for 40 years and is it any wonder why there is an epidemic of type 2 diabetes? And if you don't burn off the surplus energy (the way the athletes in the adverts do), is there any wonder why we're all getting fatter. Eat from the top of the Hourglass.
If you are to avoid the roller coaster ride of high and low blood sugar level, your body needs some protein and fat for most meals. I see some people who are eating very little fat and protein during the day. In particular they think that if they have some fat for breakfast they'll die. The body needs something like 20% or more of its daily food intake in the form of fat. If it doesn't get it you miss out on the fat soluble vitamins for one thing, and you run the risk of becoming depressed for another.
It's advertising and culture, or more precisely the Kellogification and Tip Topification of our diets that has us presume that a bowl of breakfast biscuits and a slice of toast constitutes a decent breakfast. It goes hand in hand with the Coca Colonization of the world as far as food trends go.
Why bring kids up to think that eating biscuits and toast for breakfast is the best way to start the day? Why would you eat them yourself? It's a lazy food plan.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, the fast food chains are but the tip of a very large iceberg of junk food manufacturers and purveyors. Just wade through the shelves of your local supermarket to see who the biggest junk food manufacturers and distributors are. You will know the manufacturers by their ability to fill up a whole row of shelving, by themselves, from top to bottom.
I don't recommend any of the breakfast biscuits listed below. If I eat any thing it's the occasional bowl of unrefined, plain, common or garden, ordinary, everyday, rolled oats. Covered in fruit, yoghurt, psyllium husk, flax seed oil and some juice they make a terrific breakfast. They come in a plastic bag and cost about $1.40 a Kg.
I've divided the list into 6 categories based on their sugar content.
● low sugar - <5gms/100 gms of product ● Not so low sugar - 5 - 9gms/100gms ● High sugar - 10 - 19gms/100gms ● Very high sugar - 20 - 29gms/100gms ● Extremely high sugar - 30 - 39gms/100gms ● Dreadfully high sugar - 40 - 49gms/100gms ● Unbelievably high sugar - >50gms/100gms
The figures have been rounded off, up or down as Excel is wont to do.
No marks for guessing which company has the largest proportion of biscuits in the dreadfully high and unbelievably high classifications.
* I picked up a couple of empty packets of Nesquick and Fitness at a Nestles promotion in Vienna so I guess they will wend their way to the Antipodes in due course. ** I haven't seen Honey Smacks in Australia but they're probably on the way. Tell your kids to watch out for them.
HOW SWEET IT IS In the world of brand marketing and convenience (junk) food, it's interesting to reflect on what the Kellogg company says about itself.
CONVENIENCE FOOD 'With 2003 sales of nearly $9 billion, Kellogg Company is the world's leading producer of cereal and a leading producer of convenience foods, including cookies, crackers, toaster pastries, cereal bars, frozen waffles and meat alternatives.'
Yep, sure is convenience food. Convenience food, fast food, junk food, take your pick!
Nope, it's not cereal. Cereal is the raw ingredient at the front end of the manufacturing process, not the biscuit that comes out as the finished product. Cereal is a grain that contains the husk and endosperm. A biscuit is flour, mixed with fat and sugar.
GREAT TASTE, HIGH QUALITY 'Founded in 1906, Kellogg produces great-tasting, high-quality foods, marketed in more than 160 countries. Brands include Apple Jacks®, Kellogg’s Corn Flakes®, Corn Pops®, Froot Loops®, Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes®, Mini-Wheats®, Rice Krispies®, Special K®, Eggo®, Pop-Tarts®, and Nutri-Grain®. Kellogg™ icons such as Tony the Tiger™ and Snap! Crackle! Pop!™ are among the most recognized characters in advertising.'
Yep, just about any food tastes good if it's laced with sugar. As for the quality, I'm not sure where Eggo ranks on the quality food hit parade. And as the iconic status of Tony the Tiger? It probably ranks on a par with that of George W Bush.
High quality? Don't know about that. Can anything that you make when you mix flour and water together be called 'high quality'. My mother used to do it and called it either paste or play dough!
BRANDING 'The world's greatest brands. Life's
sweetest moments.' Yep, if you're going to make a fortune, create a brand and start marketing like crazy. The product will look after itself. And if you get the branding right, you'll probably have to beat customers away with a stick. That's the secret of Kellogg's $9B a year business. It's the branding process that they turned into an art form. It's the model copied so successfully by others during the 20th Century and more recently picked up by Richard Branson.
YOU BE THE JUDGE I've plucked the last word off the Kellogg website from Kellogg Chairman and CEO, Carlos M (Gutz) Gutierrez. 'We want people to know us for our commitment to their wellbeing, as well as for high quality wholesome foods.'
THE HOURGLASS DIET If you'd like a copy of my ebook, The Hourglass Diet just send me an email request. Among other things it contains a description of the thickshake from heaven, something that will certainly give your breakfast eating routine a good shake up. If you want a copy of the ebook, do
me a favour and send the request
from a private email address. Don't ask me to send the book to a
corporate or Government Department email address because the book will
probably be trapped at your gateway and you'll get upset and think I'm an
incompetent. To open it you'll need to download and install the DNL reader
from www.desktopauthor.com In the meantime stay tuned, highly tuned. John Miller 2/11/04 john@millerhealth.com.au Miller Health Back Pain Books Health and Fitness Bookstore Crookback.com.au Aerobic Fitness Diary
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