Kellogg CEO now faces backlash for suggesting people eat 'cereal for dinner' to save money

return2ozma@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 258 points –
Kellogg CEO faces backlash for suggesting people eat 'cereal for dinner' to save money
nbcnews.com
69

Cereal is expensive. This is bad advice even without considering the conflict of interest or the fact this man is a tool.

Fuck Kellogg's but buying cereal in those bulk bags instead of in boxes literally makes cereal cost half as much. You pay out the ass for the privilege of a box.

In my experience, you save more buying cereal in bulk than most other foods, even ones more commonly bought in bulk.

Fun fact, as I wrote in another comment, it’s often the same cereal. Copying that comment here:

A roommate of mine who was an Econ major told me once that the knockoff bag cereals are often made by the same company that makes the name brand. That they’re the exact same product.

He said this is because there isn’t really much crossover between the market segments. People don’t comparison shop the bag cereal, they buy it because it’s cheaper and they wouldn’t buy the box cereal otherwise. And people who buy box cereal don’t really buy bag cereal. There’s no competition between the segments.

So if Kellogg’s or Post or General Mills makes the same cereal and throws it in a bag under a different brand name with a random title, they make more money than they would if they left that segment of the market to another player.

This is the same reason Costco and Sam’s Club brands have products that compare well with the brand names…they’re the exact same product, sold under a cheaper brand. Brew Dr can sell their kombucha under their brand at one price, but ALSO make kombucha and sell it under the Kirkland brand, and they’ll make money on both products.

I don't mean to defend him at all (in fact, I do eat cereal, but it's local store brands and not Kellogg's), but isn't it normal for a person selling a product to tell people to buy its products?

At the same time, I agree it's terrible advice he's giving!!!

All Capitalists Are Bastards.

American Cops are bullies, they might beat you to death, but a capitalist... They won't even leave a drop of blood after sucking your exploited husk dry.

Even fascists will remember who they kill as some monstrous victory of hatred in their fucked, genocidal heads, as the murder is the point, but capitalists are the opposite in temperament: cold, unfeeling reptiles. They'll knowingly poison a town of children if it means more profit, pay the paltry fine, and never bother learning the name of the town they poisoned, just an irrelevant speedbump to glorious profit.

It is just business after all. And it's bonkers what that phrase has successfully become an accepted excuse for, despite essentially having the same meaning as "just following orders."

The cops are just the capitalist's boots on the ground.

Don't forget a major contributor to minority oppression, too. Police in Capitalistic society are multifaceted and multi-roled.

"Just business" "Just following orders" "It is what it is" "What can you do?"

These all sound equivalent because they are. Their linguistic purpose represents a "thought terminating cliche".

We say these things when we don't want to spend any more time thinking about something, or don't want to think about it at all. It can be laziness or outright avoidance, but it often leads people marginalized or persecuted. For this reason anytime I hear a phrase like this come out of my mouth I try to pause & consider if I'm about to hurt someone that I could easily avoid hurting.

Edit: thought terminating cliches in and of themselves are not a bad thing. They also keep us from getting stuck in paradox loops like a machine. Sometimes things you don't have agency at all over are better just not to think about too hard to avoid bitterness. It's important though that it doesn't become a reflex and instead is utilized as a coping mechanism.

Rule of acquisition #102: Nature decays, but latinum lasts forever.

To save money, people should stop buying kelloggs shit.

I stopped eating breakfast most days. Don't need it. I rarely eat cereal when I do. And I used eat cereal so much when I was younger. Then I realized even the "healthy" cereal is not good for you. Just sugar disguised as something else.

When the commercials say [brand] [product] is a part of this complete breakfast, it would still be a complete breakfast with the cereal removed.

I've stopped eating breakfast, lunch, and most days dinner too! Gosh end stage capitalism is fun when for meals I just keep convincing my body that no, you aren't actually hungry as I drink more water.

I stopped eating breakfast not really to save money, but to extend my fasting for health benefits. I too skip most lunches. Autophagy can repair damage the human body goes through.

We really don't need to eat as much as we were programmed into thinking we do. Going from low-carb/keto to OMAD (one meal a day) made it easier to do.

Breakfast being the most important meal of the day was an ad campaign. Same with Milk doing a body good. It's all corporate nonsense.

Milk doing a body good

I'm a child of the 90s. My parents believed that so hard. I had to have a large glass of milk every night with dinner, and couldn't leave the table until it was gone. I'm also lactose intolerant. I have many memories of crying in pain in the bathroom :)

In high school my girlfriend's family had a milk fridge in the garage. A whole fridge full of gallons of whole milk. They went through over a gallon a day between her parents and 2 siblings. They bought into the propaganda hard.

You can get unsweetened bran flakes, those are a great source of fiber and added vitamins. They suck, because they're unsweetened bran flakes, but healthy cereal does exist.

I'd suggest this guy get the yogurt enema that was so popular at Kellogg during its early days.

(You know what cures those deviant sexual urges? Having thick white liquid injected into your rectum.)

FYI: the German Wikipedia page suggests that he might have had klismaphilia. The English version, despite being much more detailed and extensive, doesn't, for some odd reason.

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Assuming someone by necessity needed to do that, then a bowl of porridge would be better than cereal. It would be cheaper to buy, more filling & nutritious. And someone that cash strapped shouldn't be eating Kelloggs cereals at all since the generic equivalent probably costs half the price and tastes the same.

A roommate of mine who was an Econ major told me once that the knockoff bag cereals are often made by the same company that makes the name brand. That they’re the exact same product.

He said this is because there isn’t really much crossover between the market segments. People don’t comparison shop the bag cereal, they buy it because it’s cheaper and they wouldn’t buy the box cereal otherwise. And people who buy box cereal don’t really buy bag cereal. There’s no competition between the segments.

So if Kellogg’s or Post or General Mills makes the same cereal and throws it in a bag under a different brand name with a random title, they make more money than they would if they left that segment of the market to another player.

This is the same reason Costco and Sam’s Club brands have products that compare well with the brand names…they’re the exact same product, sold under a cheaper brand. Brew Dr can sell their kombucha under their brand at one price, but ALSO make kombucha and sell it under the Kirkland brand, and they’ll make money on both products.

Exactly.

Another way to look at this is: It's not the store brand version that's marked down, it's the "name brand" version that's marked up.

Just because they're made in the same factor doesn't mean they are made to the same specifications. Often the store brand foods are made with cheaper ingredients, even if it's on the same assembly line

So a former home office employee of Walmart it is what's left after the name brand run it is what isn't up to snuff for the name brand that is why off brand vegetables have more stems and stuff etc in them.

It's a crime that many people have to fight to merely exist then this piece of shit decides to rub it in by suggesting those folks eat cereal for dinner, as though that's a realistic or fair solution to the problem, especially while full well knowing he's going home to a 5-star dinner likely cooked by a private chef.

I certainly understand why a man who sells cereal would tell me to eat more cereal and what a good idea eating cereal would be.

Like when the U.S. asks NATO members to beef up their defense spending.

When I stopped eating cereal for breakfast, I lost weight and improved my blood sugar levels. If you want diabetes, go ahead and eat cereal.

That largely depends on the cereal. In the UK there are popular cereal types which have very little sugar in them - oats, weetabix, shredded wheat, ready brek that are fine for diabetics. The worst offenders would be kids cereals & anything overtly sugary as well as things like granola, muesli etc. Things like cornflakes, shreddies, rice krispies sit somewhere at the low end - not healthy per se but fairly low in sugar

They're all, perhaps with the exception of raw steel-cut oats, or plain bran, pretty simple carbohydrates, and you add sugar in the form of lactose on top to eat them. Pretty sure none of them are a net positive to health.

They’re all, perhaps with the exception of raw steel-cut oats, or plain bran, pretty simple carbohydrates, and you add sugar in the form of lactose on top to eat them. Pretty sure none of them are a net positive to health.

The UK diabetes website says they're fine. I'm sure if you were diabetic you would be extra careful about milk, portion size though. For everyone else they're about as low sugar as cereal gets, whether we're talking breakfast cereal, or cereal in fields cereal.

This is how social darwinist rich people or also known as rich see you.

The Race Betterment Foundation was a eugenics and racial hygiene organization founded in 1914 at Battle Creek, Michigan by John Harvey Kellogg due to his concerns about what he perceived as "race degeneracy".

weird, considering how the founder of Kellogg's was such a great guy.

Just to clarify, John Harvey Kellogg is not the founder of Kellogg. His brother, Will Keith founded the cereal company. John Harvey owned a sanitarium and advocated all sorts of kooky things, mostly “health” related, as broadly as that term was considered at the time. IIRC Will Keith didn’t seem to share a lot of his brother’s beliefs but was more than happy to sell the cereals his brother promoted as beneficial to his adherents.

Of course, a wealthy industrialist supporting racist beliefs at the turn of the last century would be pretty common, but I don’t know specifically about W. K. Kellogg’s beliefs.

Gary Pilnick, you are a gigantic douche.

We don’t want your Monsanto crispy cancer flakes anyway, Gary

I haven’t had cereal since i was a kid. Once I could make my own food choices, I haven’t touched the stuff.

Why would anyone be surprised? A good CEO has the best interests of a company in mind.

We shouldn't glorify antisocial professions.

Being a CEO of a publically traded company has become a firmly antisocial profession.

These people don't work to benefit society, they work to benefit themselves exclusively by extracting as much as they can from society.

Then again, our culture seems to despise people in pro-social vocations like teachers and nurses, so maybe I'm wrong and we should keep trying to beat each other to death and fuck each other over to "win." Maybe, if we do it well enough, we'll be gone, which means the planet wins.

A good ceo would keep his mouth shut while doing the normal underhanded shit.

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I mean Kellogg's sells A LOT of cereal, and some of them are very healthy and very cheap so it's not a terrible suggestion.

Is there any cereal that's "very healthy"? Or was that idea just pushed to sell more cereal.

Fibre One? The one without the extra stuff. Maybe that.

It's not a meal replacement, but it has a lot of fibre.

Ooh you reminded me of this bean cereal i used to get from krogers years ago, they were sorta healthy i believe with plenty of fiber and protein. Imma look for it next time im there now.

Sure. Try corn flakes or anything with oats that doesn't have a shitton of sugar added. Certainly many of them have nearly 0 nutritional value but others are some of the healthiest stuff you can eat.

Euuuuh I don't know in the US but in Europe "corn flakes" have so much sugar they are everything except healthy

Notice the lack of capital letters. "corn flakes" in the general sense don't have any added sugar. They're just corn flakes. If you're looking at Frosted Corn Flakes that's a different story.

Also milk is very calorie dense so you have to watch out for that.

My guy: what did I just say?

You said

I mean Kellogg’s sells A LOT of cereal, and some of them are very healthy and very cheap so it’s not a terrible suggestion.

What Kellogg's cereals are both "very healthy" and "very cheap"?

Well I meant cereal in general but looking at the actual ingredients very briefly both Corn Flakes and Special K only have 4g of sugar per 1 1/4 cup servings.

Kellogg is easily twice as expensive as no brand cereal.

It's a tone deaf response is the issue. CEOs are at the top of the pyramid. People want empathy and actions to reduce the massive strain of costs. Instead of something constructive like "Yes the cost of living is a crisis. Kellogg provided X to food banks and will increase Y or provide a new line of affordable lower cost cereal" he went "Ya.you fucked. Buy more Kelloggs and eat it for dinner. Cause why the fuck do you plebs want dinner? JUST BUY KELLOGS BRO!"