Brain food

I read an article last week in the Chicago Tribune about breakfast cereal and it stuck in my head. The Tribune investigation shockingly revealed that the food industry had found a way around regulations requiring more nutritious breakfast cereal by fortifying it's sugary cereal and offering more "adult" cereals. The Tribune was also amazed that children seem to prefer the sugary cereals and that consumption can be correlated to advertising on children's television programs.

I don't know if it's because we homeschool or because we don't have cable TV, but my kids have rarely eaten sugary cereal. Our allergies might also be part of it, but we've never shopped for cereal. We bought the kids cheerios when they were babies and toddlers, a perfect, portable snack. We buy puffed rice when we want to make "gooey cookies." Other than that, we don't really eat cereal. Small once had fruit loops from a breakfast buffet at a hotel. And I can recall Medium pointing to Lucky Charms and saying "That's just strange."

We don't need fast breakfast. Today the kids made pancakes together. Small regularly eats bacon. Medium makes herself an omelet or oatmeal. Large will have last nights' leftovers, a hot dog or fried eggs with no toast. Some mornings we are more pressed for time than others, most mornings they can follow their taste buds and fend for themselves. Small can microwave bacon and oatmeal on his own - he prefers steel cut oats.

It used to be that when the kids were exposed to cable TV, they would stare and stare at it, more interested in the commercials than the shows. Now they talk back at the commercials or skip channels. We don't need cable for reception and are able to watch all we want (including Spongebob) via Netflix. So, we've never had that to cut out of our budget in lean times.

I can imagine the repetitive advertising could get kids begging. But most kids are reasonable. When mine watched a lot of PBS kids, they would occasionally ask for Juicy Juice. I explained the packaging problem of individual juice boxes and the unit cost.

I don't have anything against sugary cereals, but it's never been part of our budget. Along the same lines of kid products and advertising, we did get the strangely flavored Dora and Spongebob toothpaste for a while, but we have now graduated to Aquafresh and all are happy.

Marketing to kids is here to stay. So are parents.