Real Men Eat Crap

Posted By elissa on Jul 26, 2009 | 1 comment

Introducing the new “Wheaties Fuel”…

Testosterone swirls around every aspect of Wheaties Fuel’s introduction. General Mills — maker of the most popular brand, Cheerios, and the second-largest cereal manufacturer, behind Kellogg’s — used a panel of only male athletes, including the Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning and the Boston Celtics power forward Kevin Garnett, to consult on both the nutritional profile and flavor.

From that, the company produced three prototypes of Wheaties Fuel. Samples are going out to about 1,000 “everyday athletes,” primarily Men’s Health readers who volunteered online. By popular vote, those readers will choose the winner, which will be announced Sept. 9; for a few months, the cereal will be available only online, and will be in supermarkets in January.

…The three prototypes bear little resemblance to the original Wheaties, a basic wheat flake: all are much sweeter than the original (each are 25 percent sugars by weight, compared to original Wheaties, at 15 percent). Two contain clusters that have a cinnamon-roll-like flavor and a third has raisins, cranberries and almonds. A cup, without milk, contains 210 calories, compared to 133 in the original Wheaties.

This is a great development, because we all know men require even more sugar and calories in their diets, right?

I’m being sarcastic, of course.  It’s not as if there’s actually a need for such a product, even among men who really are athletes, and burn cals by the truckload.  It’s all about trying to boost brand sales via niche marketing.

Earlier brand extensions of Wheaties have not bowled over consumers, with the company ceasing production of both Honey Frosted Wheaties and Wheaties Raisin Bran in 2002, after a seven-year run, and of Wheaties Energy Crunch in 2004, after just three years.

Naturally, the Marketing Boyz are playing it with a completely straight face… just because there’s no real need for the product doesn’t mean you can’t create one.

“Nobody in this enormous category is speaking to men,” said David Clark, a marketing manager at General Mills. “Men don’t use their wives’ razors or deodorants; why would they be eating their cereal?”

As my bud, Will Brink responded:

“Their cereal? It’s got extra estrogen added to it? This is a perfect example of the saying “no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” Sad but true statement that…”

I’m with Will… outside of lame “diet” products like Special K, I’ve always seen packaged breakfast cereal as a unisex sort of product.  Men and women are both people, after all, and people need to eat. Food is food…End of story.

Assuming you even think of packaged cereal as “food”, that is… I don’t, and haven’t for a long time. The high heat treatment and extrusion processes used to produce cereal flakes are rather damaging to the macronutrients and result in the formation of potentially harmful advanced glycation end products (AGEs).  As one research study described it:

Indeed, several food processing techniques promote glycoxidation.  Processing of some ready-to-eat cereals, which includes heating at temperatures over 230^oC, may explain the high AGE content of these products.  Also, many cereals and snack-type foods undergo an extrusion process under high pressure to produce pellets of various shapes and densities.  This treatment causes major chemical changes, thermal degradation, dehydration, depolarization and recombination of fragments, all of which can promote glycoxidation.

As far as I’m concerned, ready-to-eat cereals are damaged goods, that serve mostly as sources of calories and sprayed on vites/minerals.  Adding more sugar is simply adding insult to injury.

But that’s par for the course, when it comes to food products aimed at the “bro” market.  Seems to me that every time I look at food products marketed to “Real Men” – it’s something that’s not particularly healthy.  For example:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSLp5yt2C8Q]

and…

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLIIKrJ6nnI]

Since men are, on average, larger than women,  they can also consume more calories/day.  But this isn’t a “get out of jail free” card – the difference isn’t so profound, that men can afford to double up on higher fat/sugar/sodium food products without paying a price for it.  We’re smack in the middle of an obesity epidemic, for chrissakes, so EVERYONE needs to be more mindful of what they eat: men as well as women.

I’m not against gender-specific marketing, per se… but I have to admit, I’m a little weary of the “Real Men Eat Crap” angle that’s employed for marketing food products to men.  It’s not effeminate to want to be lean and healthy, or to consume foods that will help get you there.