Study: Slow Progress In Kids' Cereal Marketing

While cereal makers have improved the nutritional quality of most cereals marketed to children, they have also increased marketing for many of their least nutritious products, according to a new Cereal FACTS report from the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity.

Between 2008 and 2011, total media spending on marketing cereals targeted to kids increased by 34%, according to the report, which quantifies the category’s changes in nutrition and marketing since major makers including General Mills, Kellogg and Post pledged to reduce marketing of unhealthy products to children via the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI), launched in 2006 and led by the Council of Better Business Bureaus in cooperation with the industry.