Statement from Lori Dorfman on “Children’s cereals: Sugar by the pound,” a report of the Environmental Working Group

Statement from Lori Dorfman on “Children’s cereals: Sugar by the pound,” a report of the Environmental Working Group

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Children shouldn’t be eating cookies for breakfast, yet that’s exactly what’s happening according to the Environmental Working Group’s analysis of sugar in children’s cereals. And without labels showing how much added sugar is too much, parents are at an unfair disadvantage trying to determine what to put on the breakfast table. It’s puzzling, really, since so many cereal companies have said they want to be part of the solution. Instead, the companies’ aggressive marketing of sugar-loaded breakfast cereals is setting up children for a lifetime of health problems like diabetes and other nutrition-related diseases. If cereal companies want to do right by children, why aren’t they putting their marketing muscle behind cereals with less sugar?

Lori Dorfman, DrPH
Director, Berkeley Media Studies Group
a project of the Public Health Institute
510-204-9700
dorfman@bmsg.org