For a long time cereal was relegated to junk food.A box was too sugary. A kid would be better off eating a doughnut for breakfast.Now those bowls of grains are being changed . They;re better to eat and better for the diet.This should help their slump in sales.
Regular contributor Kim Severson wrote about this in yesterday's New York Times Wednesday Food section. In recent years cereal was relagated to foods of the past. A new generation either started the day with a quickly grabbed yogurt drink or protein bar. Some even skipped breakfast. Now cereal is making a comeback and it;s not just the sugary candy sort.The cereal giants have to do something to get out of the financial dip . Shoppers last year bout less than thirteen percent less cereal than in 2021, when the pandemic was winding down. According to Richard Caine,a senior analyst with the market research company Mintel, Generation Z is not too enthusiastic about cereal for breakfast. They're also not enthisuastic about products that have functional health benefits. The MAHA movement -Make America Healthy Again also is against them, expounding about how bad ultra processed food is. Also add in the addition of GLP-1 drugs that suppress appetites and the boxes being a higher price and there'sa reason why there's a dip in popularity and sales.
However the big guns like General Mills is striking out and going back to their roots. Cereals have been around since 1863 - the height of the Civil War. The first kind was created by Dr. James Caleb Jackson Jackson in Danville ,New York at his sanitorium. The first batch was a dried mix of water and a coarse whole wheat flour championed byt he inventor of graham crackers,Sylvester Graham, an eccentric health obsessed minister.The pieces were so hard that they had to be absorbed by milk and promoted digestive health. Cornflakes were created by the Kellogg brothers, John Harvey and Will Keith. They created a healthy way to have breakfast. Now brands are returning to that belief.The Ghost company who manufactures the ultra sweet but tasty Lucky Charms have added seventeen grams of protein pr serving That four times more than what was in the original serving.Frosted Mini Wheats now have more fiber than ever in them. There is also Kashi which health focused consumers like Nyles Peterson and Megan Saia eat.Kashi offers whole wheat biscuits or whole wheat squares (similar to Weetabix) Their other cereals are loaded with protein and fiber, making them great sweet snacks as well as a way to start the day.
Cereal needs to be made healthier if it's to survive.Companies realize this and are trying to get America to eat a good bowl every morning. It may just take a dash more fiber and protein to do so.
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