Diet and Exercise Myth #18: Breakfast cereal and muesli bars are health food

Well, some cereals and bars might be. The vast majority are not, however.

My aim with this myth is to point out how incredibly easy it is for food companies to pass off anything as health food.

Marketers are so good at this, that they can make you believe that anything is a health food without even specifically saying so. They’re very clever at using particular colours, themes, pictures and vague words on their packaging and in their marketing, to create a really misleading impression.

A very popular chocolate and hazelnut spread provides a great case study on this. It’s marketed heavily towards children and their purchasing parents, and it has a nutrition profile that is almost identical to cake icing (read: not very nutritional).

This spread is 56% pure sugar and 31% fat. Think about that for a moment – this product is almost 90% pure fat and sugar. The ingredient list is ordered by ingoing weight here in Australia; the first ingredient is sugar, and the second is palm oil.

You would assume that the makers of this product might find it somewhat challenging to pass it off as health food. But that is exactly their strategy, and it has been hugely successful for them over many years.

Plastered across the front of the product in big bold letters are statements like “With the goodness of whole nuts”, or “No artificial colors or preservatives”, or “Eat as part of a healthy breakfast”.

In their advertising, the company never explicitly claims that hazelnut spread is inherently healthy.  However they have consciously chosen to position it as a health food – this has long been a core plank of their marketing campaign.

I’m only using this product as a case in point. A similar approach is used in many other food products of dubious health standing. Breakfast cereals and muesli bars are common examples, but you see it everywhere.

Advertising and marketing are powerful forces. It’s a critical modern skill to be able to understand nutrition panels and equip yourself to make your own independent assessments.