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 What is the most popular cereal brand in American grocery stores?
Hint: It's been General Mills' top name since 1951.
Another hint: If you're a parent, you've vacuumed it from the
minivan and under the high-chair cushion by the cupful.
The answer, of course, is Cheerios.
The iconic cereal, known by its distinctive yellow box, is 70 years
old this year and still a force on the breakfast cereal market. One
out of every eight boxes of cereal to leave the shelf in America
carries the Cheerios name.
"They've been around since the beginning of man, right?" said Kathy
Scott in Cape Coral, Fla. For her, the cereal's linked to memories
of childhood Saturday morning cartoons.
"My mother was very old-fashioned, a stay-at-home mom," Scott, 50,
said, "She made breakfast every morning, but on Saturday morning we
were allowed to have cereal. Throw some fruit in there, sit on the
floor and watch cartoons."
The tradition repeated itself with her own two children.
"Saturday morning cartoons and Cheerios," she said.
To make Cheerios, balls of dough are heated and shot out of a
"puffing gun" at hundreds of miles an hour, according to General
Mills. The company's waterfront plant in Buffalo has been firing
them off since 1941, often cloaking the city with a distinctive
toasty-with-a-sweet-finish aroma and inspiring T-shirts announcing
"My city smells like Cheerios." More than 10 shapes and sizes were
considered before the makers settled on little Os.
Since then, the company's introduced several new flavors, starting
with Honey Nut in 1979 and last year, chocolate.
In 2009, sales of Honey Nut Cheerios surpassed the original flavor
for the first time and remain in the top spot today.
But Kathleen Dohl, 30, sticks to the originals, the ones she refers
to as the "old-school, yellow box, plain Jane" variety. She buys it
in bulk at Sam's Club to keep her 6- and 3-year-olds happy.
"That's one of the first 'real people' foods that they ate," the
Chester, Va., mother said.
"They know when we're having a morning where we're running late,
they're like, 'can I get a snack bag of Cheerios?'" she said,
"because it's something I can't say no to. I can say no to chips. I
can say no to candy. I can say no to a dozen other things, but a
snack bag of Cheerios? How can you say no to that?"
So yes, she's cleaned them out of the car seats.
"At least they're not sticky," she said, "so that's a plus. And
they're not so colorful. Once you grind them in they just look like
the rest of the dirt, they don't look neon-colored."
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 Minneapolis-based General Mills began advertising Cheerios (first
called Cheerioats) as a first food for toddlers in 1974. Since 1999,
the company has focused on promoting the cereal as healthy; it's
made from whole-grain oats, with 3 grams of fiber and 1 gram of
sugar per serving. But in 2009, federal regulators took issue with
the cereal box's claim that it was "clinically proven to help lower
cholesterol." In a warning letter, the Food and Drug Administration
said only FDA-approved drugs can make such a claim.
General Mills, in its response, stood by the claims and said the
FDA's complaints dealt with how the language appears on the box, not
the cereal itself. The case is still open, an FDA spokeswoman said.
"I went through a phase in high school where I drank Coca-Cola and
carried around a box of Cheerios in my back pack," said Dohl, whose
course schedule and yearbook duties often kept her at the computer
and in her car through meals.
"That's literally what I ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner," she
said. "...At least I felt like it was healthy."
Since cereal is the major source of fiber for Americans, something
most people shortchange themselves on, Cornell University nutrition
expert David Levitsky said it's actually not a bad idea to eat
cereal as a relatively low-calorie lunch or dinner once in a while,
even the sugar-sweetened variety.
"They're seducing kids to eat it," he acknowledged. "It's a
technique that breakfast food companies have learned and it works...
but it's got a good aspect because that's where they're getting
their fiber in the morning," he said. "And all these cereals are
enriched."
Americans spent $6.4 billion on ready-to-eat cereal in the 52 weeks
ending May 15, according to SymphonyIRI Group, a Chicago-based
market research firm that tracked sales at supermarkets, drug stores
and mass merchandise outlets, excluding Walmart.
In honor of Cheerios' 70th Buffalo's Citybration Festival
highlighting its assets will include a June 26 Cheerios breakfast in
sight (and smell) of the General Mills facility.
"Cheerios are actually a more iconic food to Buffalo than even the
ubiquitous chicken wing," said festival organizer Marti Gorman. (The
spicy Buffalo wing came along in 1964.)
"There just must be something so gently appealing about the
product," said Dave Hassett, a school counselor whose Born in
Buffalo site sells the Cheerios T-shirts online and at local
festivals. Along with his 4-year-old daughter, he said he eats a
bowl daily. "I hope they stick around for 70 more years and beyond."
[Associated
Press;
By CAROLYN THOMPSON]
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
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