This Week In Offensive Breakfast Cereal
| September 11, 2012 | Posted by Issa under Radical Self-Acceptance |
I like Cheerios. I like Multi Grain Cheerios. Apparently, Multi Grain Cheerios doesn’t like me. Cheerios thinks that there should be less of me. They dislike me and how much of me there is so much that they’ve made it their slogan.
Multi Grain Cheerios: More grains. Less you!
That’s their slogan. With the exclamation mark and everything.
Here’s a recent ad:
My favorite part is where the neighbor is all like, “Ooh, whole grains?!” as if she’s never heard that eating whole grains is good for you. No, that’s not my favorite part. Because, seriously. Everyone has gotten the whole-grains-fruits-veggies message by now. My actual favorite part is how the ad starts with one woman checking out the ass of the other woman.
Like the ad, my box of insulting breakfast cereal makes a claim: “People who choose more whole grain tend to weight less than those who don’t.”
That may be accurate (I can’t tell; there isn’t a reference to back it up). But even if it is, Cheerios is clearly hoping that you’ll conclude that eating Cheerios will help you lose weight. And that’s what we call a correlation/causation error. Just because people who eat more whole grain tend to weigh less doesn’t mean that if you begin to eat more whole grains you will lose weight.
The back of my box of offensive Multi Grain Cheerios has a silhouette of a woman wearing Cheerio clothes. The full text is:
“I love looking my best. That’s why I lead a healthy lifestyle and make Multi Grain Cheerios cereal a part of my sensible diet. People who choose more whole grain tend to weigh less than those who don’t.
With 20 grams of whole grain and 110 lightly sweetened calories, Multi Grain Cheerios is a delicious way to help me look fabulous!
More Grains. LESS YOU!”
What a mess. They’ve taken “healthy lifestyle”, “sensible diet”, and eating whole grains and mixed it up with “looking my best” and weighing less.
As long as we’re just saying whatever comes to mind, let me say that Cheerios has not made me weigh any less. Cheerios is my most frequent breakfast food, and all those whole grains are not making less of me. I mean, I eat a lot more than 110 calories of them, because what the fuck? But surely it’s obvious that eating more whole grains would make me even skinnier! What’s that you say? It doesn’t? It’s almost like we’re not doing science here!!
How about this? How about when I want to look my fabulous best I put on my favorite dress and do my nails. And how about when you want to sell me a cereal you just sell me a cereal instead of trying to sell me some idiotic diet crap?
lest we forget: corn has been given the OK from the FDA to be referred to as a grain on food labels. Made from corn? Whole grain!
Corn can be a whole grain, as long as the hull is left in, which it usually isn’t.
“More Grains. LESS YOU!”
What a horrible, horrible thing to say. I hope people don’t think this way. I have never in my life thought there was to much me. Sure I have thought there was to much fat and I have tried to lose weight. But I never looked in the mirror and said “gosh, I wish there was less me”.
I don’t want to get to metaphysical with this but I am not just my body. I am also my mind, experience, self-esteem, friends, humor, hobbies, etc. To say I want less me, is to say I want to be less funny, less interesting, less lovable, less smart and less talented.
How my body looks is just one part of how I see myself. And yes sometimes my body still pisses me off. Learning to not be mean to my body is hard, and I am not there yet. And I don’t know if I will ever be there. But I am damn happy with me almost all the time. In fact one of my goals in life is to have even more me.
“Less bullshit advertising to make me feel bad. MORE ME!”
This part is interesting to me. When you think about “calories in/calories out”, the claim is that if you eat fewer calories you will lose weight. But calories are used for lots of things, not just maintaining your pounds. Calories are also used for thinking, laughing, your activities, etc. If you’re restricting calories, you don’t get to restrict only from the calories that keep you your size and not from the ones that make you sharp and especially funny that day. So in a real sense, calorie restriction could make “less you” as you damage all kinds of aspects of yourself by not feeding yourself. And then the double whammy is that calorie restriction DOESN’T work long-term to make “less you” in the pounds sense. So it’s really just a giant mess of fuck you from all sides. Fuck Cheerios. What assholes.
Very true, I had not ever thought about that.
When I restrict what I eat it changes how I feel and how I act. When I have done low carb before I get a headache, I get bitchy and rude. Everyone around me becomes less shiny and more annoying.
When I restrict calories I am sleep and I feel sad. And it is harder to do the things I like need or like to do.
I am all for healthy eating for the sake of healthy eating. If I eat to much sugar I crash (it has to be a lot). If I don’t drink enough water I get a headache. Fruits, veggies and whole grains are all great just because they are, not need to ad emotional baggage to them.
Why can’t Cheerios just play up the good parts of their product without trying to hurt peoples feelings?
Jesus H. I eat Multi Grain Cheerios too. I had not seen this latest ad campaign. What a load of crap.
I like the part where she tosses the clothes and says, “Not going back there again!” Most likely, you’re wrong.
I know, right? Keep the clothes!
It’s so good to see someone else irritated by the rudeness of their commercial breakfast foods. I was taken aback one morning some mornings ago and very “WTF, Cheerios? Why you hating on me?”
[...] bleach* -Matching book covers and bathing suits, plus size edition -Wow…I will not be eating Cheerios again any time soon. -Frances from Corpulent rocks a colorful, revealing costume while performing [...]
This makes me sad. Because I REALLY love multigrain cheerios and that commercial is EXTREMELY condescending and generally obnoxious.
I hate when things I like make commercials that make it clear that they basically think of me as that one really uncool kid who keeps trying to hang out with them.