It's time the headline-happy media stopped bashing breakfast cereals and moved the debate on, says Greg Peterson
On Monday I read The Daily Mail with a heavy heart as I ate my morning bowl of Optivita. It wasn't just because it was the last day of my holiday. It was much more to do with the headline: 'Cereal makers told: no more fake health claims.'
The Mail would have me believe that what was in my bowl was sold to me with a pack of lies 'bogus health claims', as it called them.
Are these eye-catching headlines? Most definitely. Were these stories guaranteed to create a buzz at the water-cooler? Almost certainly. Were they true? Absolutely not.
Consumers have trusted our brands for more than a century because we've consistently done the right thing. We aim to retain and build on that trust over the next century. We're in this for the long haul not just a one-hit headline.
Every time we make a claim on our food it's backed up by sound science and our own testing. When we say Optivita can help lower cholesterol, it's because the Joint Health Claims Initiative looked at hundreds of independent scientific studies on the subject and ruled that we could. In addition, Heart UK, the Britain's only cholesterol charity, chose to endorse our product.
Optivita has no added salt and, like many of our cereals, contains less than two level teaspoonfuls of sugar per serving. That's less sugar than a slice of toast and jam, far less than you'd find in a glass of orange juice or a yoghurt and less than many people put in their cup of tea or coffee at breakfast time.
And Optivita isn't the exception to the rule. The same level of rigour goes into investigating any claim we make before we make it.
Only last week, the same papers were running headlines calling cereals the new superfoods a story relating to US research that showed many fibre-rich cereals contained high levels of antioxidants. We are heroes one week, villains the next.
We'd have been happy to discuss this with the any of the media that picked up this story, had they contacted us. But they didn't, because it seems the food industry is fair game and inconvenient truths can get in the way of a good story.
Truths such as the fact that breakfast cereals account for only 2.7% of the salt in the nation's shopping baskets every year, with bread and meat making a bigger contribution. Such as the fact that independent scientific research shows people who eat breakfast cereals, regardless of their sugar content, tend to be slimmer than those who don't. And, beyond that, eating cereals accounts for more than 40% of UK milk consumption. Cereals and milk are a vital source of calcium.
We all hear the ticking of the UK's obesity time-bomb. Food companies such as ours are playing their part in engaging consumers in healthy lifestyles. We're giving them reason to get active and working to help them understand what's in their food through clear front-of-pack labelling. However, judging by this week's headlines, we seem to have a long way to go before we see balanced, fair or even accurate reporting of the food industry.
Unfortunately, we live in a society where one in five children skip the most important meal of the day and spend £500m a year in corner shops on a breakfast of crisps, sweets and chocolate instead. You might say stories such as the Mail's don't move the debate on and shoot the wrong target. I certainly would.
Greg Peterson is UK MD of Kellogg's.
On Monday I read The Daily Mail with a heavy heart as I ate my morning bowl of Optivita. It wasn't just because it was the last day of my holiday. It was much more to do with the headline: 'Cereal makers told: no more fake health claims.'
The Mail would have me believe that what was in my bowl was sold to me with a pack of lies 'bogus health claims', as it called them.
Are these eye-catching headlines? Most definitely. Were these stories guaranteed to create a buzz at the water-cooler? Almost certainly. Were they true? Absolutely not.
Consumers have trusted our brands for more than a century because we've consistently done the right thing. We aim to retain and build on that trust over the next century. We're in this for the long haul not just a one-hit headline.
Every time we make a claim on our food it's backed up by sound science and our own testing. When we say Optivita can help lower cholesterol, it's because the Joint Health Claims Initiative looked at hundreds of independent scientific studies on the subject and ruled that we could. In addition, Heart UK, the Britain's only cholesterol charity, chose to endorse our product.
Optivita has no added salt and, like many of our cereals, contains less than two level teaspoonfuls of sugar per serving. That's less sugar than a slice of toast and jam, far less than you'd find in a glass of orange juice or a yoghurt and less than many people put in their cup of tea or coffee at breakfast time.
And Optivita isn't the exception to the rule. The same level of rigour goes into investigating any claim we make before we make it.
Only last week, the same papers were running headlines calling cereals the new superfoods a story relating to US research that showed many fibre-rich cereals contained high levels of antioxidants. We are heroes one week, villains the next.
We'd have been happy to discuss this with the any of the media that picked up this story, had they contacted us. But they didn't, because it seems the food industry is fair game and inconvenient truths can get in the way of a good story.
Truths such as the fact that breakfast cereals account for only 2.7% of the salt in the nation's shopping baskets every year, with bread and meat making a bigger contribution. Such as the fact that independent scientific research shows people who eat breakfast cereals, regardless of their sugar content, tend to be slimmer than those who don't. And, beyond that, eating cereals accounts for more than 40% of UK milk consumption. Cereals and milk are a vital source of calcium.
We all hear the ticking of the UK's obesity time-bomb. Food companies such as ours are playing their part in engaging consumers in healthy lifestyles. We're giving them reason to get active and working to help them understand what's in their food through clear front-of-pack labelling. However, judging by this week's headlines, we seem to have a long way to go before we see balanced, fair or even accurate reporting of the food industry.
Unfortunately, we live in a society where one in five children skip the most important meal of the day and spend £500m a year in corner shops on a breakfast of crisps, sweets and chocolate instead. You might say stories such as the Mail's don't move the debate on and shoot the wrong target. I certainly would.
Greg Peterson is UK MD of Kellogg's.
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