Fake Fruit Names for Your Breakfast Cereal

A while back I wrote a post about the high profit-margin-to-cost of the breakfast cereal business. Today I have more to say on breakfast cereal, not about the manufacturing process or profit margins, but about the pervasive use of fruit-related words in the naming of these products.

If I had just ten seconds to share advice on improving your nutrition, I suspect you already know exactly what I would say: Eat more fruits and vegetables. And I don’t think that would surprise anyone. We all know that fruits and vegetables are nutritional powerhouses, and we also know that everyone should be eating more of them, especially since most of us don’t eat enough produce to begin with.  Continue reading


Processed Food: A Menace to Satiety

Have you ever thought about the fact that you might be able to eat your way through several pounds of potato chips, but not the same weight of baked potatoes? How many pounds of baked potatoes do you think you could actually eat in one sitting? A friend of mine came for a visit a while back, and reported to me that she had been discussing my recommendations with her clever boyfriend. This is how he summed it up: “Processed food is a menace to satiety.”  Continue reading