|
A few months ago, Kellogg’s was required to withdraw an advertisement
that it was using in the United Kingdom for its most famous breakfast
cereal, Cornflakes. In it, they claimed that children were “on average
9% more alert” after eating a bowl of this famous breakfast cereal,
than children who had no breakfast at all.
This superb piece of science was based on a test of 60 children who ate Kellogg’s breakfast cereals, compared to 30 children who ate nothing. With those limited numbers, you might think that this is probably not the greatest piece of science you’ve ever heard about. But do hold on for the way that they measured the childrens alertness.
Now you could be of the opinion that a company the size of Kellogg’s would be able to put a great deal of research and development into the way “alertness” is measured. One would expect the latest high-tech bio monitoring equipment complete with fuzzy logic equations and anything else you would care to think of! However, in this case, Kellogg’s decided to use a different kind of logic, (to my mind completely fuzzy) as they asked the children’s mother’s to judge the child’s alertness!
You decide what you think the scale might be? But as one wag has said: “Well, if it’s a scale of 0-10 I guess 0 must be dead and it goes up from there?”. This is the sort of science that gives science a bad name.
The simple fact is that any breakfast will increase anyone’s, let alone a child’s, energy and concentration when compared with eating nothing. But like all high carb breakfasts, the alertness will soon fade when the high from startch/sugar wears off.
The healthy alternative, giving a far more balanced level of alertness, focus and maybe concentration, is the same for everybody – children and adults alike – and that’s a breakfast that’s rich in protein and healthy fats. Not only are these more healthy, on the whole containing ingredients whose provenance can be proven. These types of foods also take longer to break down in the body, meaning that the energy gained from them will last for a much longer period.
See our “Breakfast Tips” article on the website for more details of healthy breakfasts.
No one has commented on this article. |
