GMA Responds to Cereal FACTS Report

WASHINGTON — The Grocery Manufacturers Association responded to a Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity report that found that although cereal companies have improved the nutrition quality of kids' cereals, they continue to market high-sugar cereals to children, while promoting more nutritious family cereals to parents and adults for their own consumption.

GMA acknowledged that today’s ready-to-eat cereals are more nutritious than ever, adding that through work with the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, leading cereal companies have voluntarily adopted strict advertising criteria so that 100% of their ads seen on children’s programming promote healthier diet choices and better-for-you products.

“Under CFBAI they have reformulated products to reduce sugars, fats and sodium and to increase positive nutrients,” said GMA in a statement. “Since 2007, sugar reductions in cereal have ranged from 10% to 25%, and today 86% of cereals advertised to children contain no more than 10 grams of sugar per serving.”

The 2012 Cereal FACTS (Food Advertising to Children and Teens Score) report — a follow-up to a 2009 study by the same name — examined the nutritional quality of more than 100 brands and nearly 300 individual varieties of cereal marketed to children, families and adults. Researchers also examined the scope of advertising on TV, the Internet and social media sites.