Lucky Charms: Poster Child for Industrial Junk Food? Fat Profits, Fat Kids

Lucky Charms manufacturer, General Mills, is celebrating the sugar-laden cereal's 50th birthday this year. 

Well, why shouldn't mega-corporation General Mills celebrate? Lucky Charms is the 10th best selling cereal in the U.S., a stand-out milestone in a lucrative product field of hundreds upon hundreds of breakfast cereals. Very few fake foods have achieved such lofty sales volumes. 

And after half a century on supermarket shelves, Lucky Charms sales are surging.  Reported Businessweek about first quarter 2013:

"IRI, a Chicago-based market research firm, estimates that Lucky Charms sales this year are up 14.5 percent to $145.9 million so far. By contrast, the company’s overall U.S. sales were up just 2 percent in the latest quarter and 1 percent in fiscal 2013."

A reason for the newest upsurge in Lucky Charms' popularity? Adults, who were targeted in clever new marketing campaigns. "The company claims more than 40 percent of Lucky Charms eaters are adults," per Businessweek.

"'We know that adults have always loved Lucky Charms and by reconnecting them with the brand, we have reignited their love of one of their favorite things from childhood,' says Carla Vernon, General Mills’ marketing director for Lucky Charms." (source - Businessweek)

Exuded another marketing guru about Lucky Charms' 50th birthday:

"For 50 years, Lucky Charms has been delighting kids and kids at heart with our wonderful combination of frosted toasted oats and magical marshmallows," Jenny Zechmeister, marketing manager for Lucky Charms, told HLN" (source - HLNTV, a Time-Warner Company)

What was General Mills thinking?
 As I pondered the appalling public health impact of this beloved "cereal" fake food comprised of 37% sugar and a plethora of artificial colors and flavors, I wondered... 

• What was General Mills ("GM") thinking when it created Lucky Charms? 
• Was child nutrition or public health ever seriously considered? 
• Or is Lucky Charms the perfect poster child for industrial-made junk food aimed solely at maximum corporate profitability? 

Seems that Lucky Charms was created on a dare in 1962 by GM Research Labs to Vice-President John Holahan. A business dare to create a new product in six months, rather than the usual two to three years, and for that product to use existing manufacturing  capacity at its Cheerios or Wheaties plants.  

While perusing supermarket aisles, Holahan conjured the idea of combining Cheerios with bits of Brach's bright orange Circus Peanuts marshmallow candy.    Per Dr. Tracy Tuten, marketing professor at East Carolina University:

"The General Mills cereal scientists worked with the Kraft marshmallow scientists to develop a cereal marshmallow with the right properties. The Circus peanuts had much more water content than most cereal pieces. They had to develop a marshmallow with low water content that would last on the store shelves for months... The new extrusion process also allowed them to form shapes and different colors..." (source - TracyTuten.com, July 5, 2013)

Three enthusiastic focus groups of mothers and their young children, and GM ignored its normal product-development protocol process to rush Lucky Charms into supermarkets across the nation.  Exuded one mother, "If it keeps the kids quiet and happy at breakfast, bring it on!"

Marbits, short for marshmallow bits, are and always have been 25% of Lucky Charms cereal. But that apparently wasn't enough sugar to "keep the kids happy at breakfast."  

"The oat cereal was not originally sugar coated. After initial sales failed to meet expectations, the oats were sugar coated, and the cereal's success grew. The recipe for the cereal remained unchanged until the introduction of a new flavor: Chocolate Lucky Charms, in 2005...

"Following the product launch, the General Mills marketing department found that sales performed dramatically better if the composition of the marbits changed periodically. Various features of the marbits were modified to maximize their appeal to young consumers. In focus groups and market research, more brightly colored charms resulted in better sales than did dull or pastel colors. Holahan called Lucky Charms a 'lesson in creative marketing.'" (source - Wikipedia)

The answers to my three questions appear to be... 
What was General Mills ("GM") thinking when it created Lucky Charms? 

• Cut product development time by 70%
• Not incur additional manufacturing facilities costs
• Long store shelf life
• Something super-sugary to please the palate
• Something fun to attract and amuse kids
• "Creative marketing" to spur sales

Was child nutrition or public health ever seriously considered?  No, apparently neither played any role whatsoever in GM's creation of Lucky Charms cereal.

Is Lucky Charms the perfect poster child for industrial-made junk food aimed solely at maximum corporate profitability? That's the logical conclusion. 

What is General Mills celebrating?

So what, exactly, is General Mills celebrating when it joyously marks the 50th birthday of its Lucky Charms cereal product line?    

Clever marketing, especially to children. Very long sales life. Addictively sugary taste, ensuring repeat buyers. Fast-track product development. Hefty profits for mega-corporation General Mills.  

Nutrition for kids be damned. Public health be damned. Mere impediments to corporate profits from Lucky Charms, perfect poster child for industrial-made junk food.  

Happy Birthday to Lucky Charms for 50 years of fat profits and fat kids! 

Gaudy New Frito-Lay Chips Embody Wrongs of U.S. Industrial Foods

Three gaudy new Lay's potato chip shock-and-awe flavors embody all that's destructive and wrong and seductively delicious about U.S. industrial foods. 

Frito-Lay, Inc. is betting millions that these taste-exploding snacks will be the next red-hot must-buy in grocery markets, convenience stores, and gas stations nationwide.  If U.S. culinary history since the 1950s is any guide, Frito-Lay is likely correct.  

These chips, the brash embodiment of fake food in all its tasteless glory, would be an addictive party-and-a-half for junk food aficionados.  I should know... I sampled all three flavors after my son picked-up giveaways pushed this past weekend at a major supermarket chain.  (Click here for Lay's "Vote to Save Your Fave" contest at Facebook.) 

In extraordinary new bestseller "Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us"Pulitzer Prize journalist Michael Moss writes of two corporate suppliers of key ingredients to American junk-food manufacturers:

"These were no run-of-the-mill ingredients... These were the three pillars of processed foods, the creators of crave, and each of the CEOS needed them in huge quantities to turn their products into hits. These were also the ingredients  that, more than any other, were directly responsible for the obesity epidemic.  Together, the two suppliers had...

• the salt, which was processed in dozens of ways to maximize the jolt that taste buds would feel with the very first bite;

•  they had the fats, which delivered the biggest loads of calories and worked more subtly in inducing people to overeat;

•  and they had the sugar, whose raw power in exciting the brain made it perhaps the most formidable ingredient of all, dictating the formulations of products from one side of the grocery to the other."

Author Moss recounts in lurid, well-documented detail how Kraft, Nestle, General Mills, Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, Mars, and other industrial food corporations used tobacco industry marketing tactics to addict Americans to radically unhealthy foods laden with salt, fat, and sugar.   

Moss also describes the extreme addiction of industrial food corporations to rich, near-endless profits reaped by junk foods that are making Americans fat and sick... and how the U.S. government is too cozy with industrial food executives and lobbyists to stop the sickening of America. 

Notes the New York Times review of this book:

"Virtually everything you can buy in a supermarket that’s not an outer-aisle pure food like milk or kohlrabi has been fiddled with to make you shiver with bliss — which will in turn make you buy the product again and again."

I'm awestruck by the shameless, in-your-face brass of Frito-Lay in testing and releasing these three grotesquely over-the-top junk foods in the face of First Lady Michelle Obama's courageous three-year campaign to urge American children to eat more veggies and fruits, and less unhealthy fare.   

Yes, I'm awestruck at the corporate gall of unleashing these aggressively unhealthy snacks. 

But I'm also quite awestruck by the absolutely awesome taste of Lay's Chicken & Waffles flavored potato chips.  (I confess: see my empty bag, at right!)

Therein lies the deadly diet dilemma for us and our children and grandchildren. For the very vitality of our nation. 

Something needs to be done. Something needs to change. 

My suggestion? Make better food choices. Don't buy these scrumptious snacks that are intentionally designed to hook you and yours into a deadly, delicious cigarette-like habit. Just say NO.