Something You Should Know - How Optimism Works in Tough Times & The Curious Story of Breakfast Cereal

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Starting point is 00:01:28 Monarch.com with code S-Y-S-K. Today on something you should know, it's amazing how many people don't know what to do when they get a bloody nose. Do you? Then a better understanding of true optimism that will inspire and empower you. Optimism doesn't just drive our well-being. It drives our performance as well, greater productivity, energy, we live longer, you're more likely to survive a cancer diagnosis. So, in my opinion, it is the best investment you can make. Also, what's the best time to go for a walk?

Starting point is 00:02:09 And the story of cereal and how it became synonymous with a healthy breakfast. Cereal's not the worst food product by any means, but it's sure a good example of how you turn some sugary product into something that everybody thinks they must have and eat for breakfast for heaven's sake. All this today on Something You Should Know. A big thank you to today's sponsor, Vinted. I think most of us have what I call someday clothes. I'll wear that someday.

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Starting point is 00:04:04 So if you or one of your kids or somebody gets a bloody nose, what do you do? There's a bit of misinformation floating around out there, so I'm going to tell you what the Mayo Clinic says you should do as we begin this episode of something you should know. Hi, I'm Mikeerruthers. Welcome. So a lot of us were taught that when your nose starts to bleed, you should tilt. your head backward. That actually is the opposite of what you're supposed to do. Tilting back does not stop the bleeding. It just sends the blood down your throat where you could swallow it, become nauseated, or even choke on it. Instead, you should sit upright, lean slightly forward, and pinch the soft part of your nose, not the hard, bony bridge. And here's the part many people get wrong. Hold it

Starting point is 00:04:57 continuously for 10 to 15 minutes. Don't keep letting go every 30 seconds to see whether it has stopped, because every time you do that, you interfere with the clot that's trying to form. Most ordinary nosebleeds will stop this way, so remember, forward, not backward, and pinch the soft part. That's one of those little pieces of first aid that almost everyone will eventually have a reason to use. And that is something you should know. Optimism sometimes gets a bad rap.

Starting point is 00:05:33 We tend to think of it as looking on the bright side, seeing the glass half full, believing everything will somehow just work out. And if you're a pessimist, well, that can sound ridiculous. But there's another way to think about optimism that really struck a chord with me. Optimism isn't pretending things are better than they are. It isn't even a feeling. It's a set of behaviors things you can actually do when life is difficult or uncertain, or just not going your way.

Starting point is 00:06:04 And research suggests that those behaviors can affect everything, from stress and burnout to your health, your work, and even how you handle money. Michelle Geelan is a positive psychology researcher and speaker. She's a former anchor on the CBS Morning News, and executive producer of the Happiness Advantage on PBS. She's author of a book called Resilient Optimism, The Science of Sustaining a Positive Mindset in Tough Times. Hi, Michelle, welcome to something you should know. Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

Starting point is 00:06:38 So I'd like you to define a term for me, because I hear it a lot about having a positive mindset. And it's in the subtitle of your book, Sustaining a Positive Mindset in Tough Times. What is a positive mindset? A positive mindset is one that is fueled by hope, progress, and possibility. And so where traditional optimism is expecting good things to happen and having what could be a more fleeting feeling of, I've got this, I think I can do this. What I focus on in my research is this concept of resilient optimism, which is how you build a mindset that is strong based on the behaviors that you engage in so that your optimism stays strong when it's testing. even when the first plan fails or things don't work out as you're hoping or you are just plain exhausted.

Starting point is 00:07:29 You can go back to the set of behaviors which continually strengthen your optimism and make them more resilient. So can you give me an example of that in action? Yes. So I met a nurse and she worked in the ICU the day that I met her. Two patients had coded before noon and one actually didn't make it. And she showed me what her tool to keep her mindset, hopeful, positive, and optimistic amidst days like this where she's not feeling at her best and not able to serve the patients as best as she would like. She would dip into the break room. In her locker was a folder. In the folder were notes and pictures from patients, caregivers, and their families thanking her for the work that she had done over the years and all the care that she had offered.

Starting point is 00:08:15 The reason why she used this is this concept of recalibrating your perspective. Our brains are constantly inundated with the negative, with messages that tell our brain our behavior doesn't matter. It's very common these days, obviously, as we're seeing with levels of burnout, anxiety, loneliness, and depression to feel just overwhelmed by everything going on. And so this was her move to sort of take back control of her happiness and to remind her brain and the ways in which her behavior mattered. So it didn't tell her everything in the ICU is going to be wonderful. Instead, what it did is it sent her back to the floor, feeling stronger and more

Starting point is 00:08:53 calibrated, so her perspective was more balanced. And that's what you mean by optimism is not a feeling, it's a behavior. It's doing what she did. Yes, so I think that is literally the most freeing part of this research, which is that you do not need to feel optimistic to behave. optimistically. You can engage in the simple practices. These are things that I've seen now in my 15 years working with executives that have worked to help cultivate a stronger, positive and optimistic mindset for themselves and also for their team members. And those practices help remind your brain of progress and possibility. And that can then create an upward spiral of how you look at the world in a way that hopefully helps that feeling of optimist.

Starting point is 00:09:42 catch up, but you don't need that as a core ingredient to get started. But then how do you, using your nurse example, how do you put aside the fact that the patient died? I mean, you can read all the things and the letters and all the nice things other people have said about how wonderful you are, but you've still got this smack in the face that the patient died. How do you deal with that? Yeah, so resilient optimism starts from a rational outlook. So my husband, who is also a happiness researcher or a positive psychology researcher, he came home from a talk one time. He says, this is the craziest version of optimism that I've ever run into or what people perceive as optimism. So he gave a talk at a company, and the CEO

Starting point is 00:10:29 afterwards came up and said, I love the research. I want to figure out how to more deeply embed it in my organization. And the entire presentation was about optimism, how it drives performance, and how it can be a game changer in organizations. So Sean, so he often, he often, Sean arrived to the airport. Sean gets in the guy's car, puts on a seatbelt. The CEO gets in, doesn't put on his seatbelt. And after a while, there's a seatbelt going off. So my husband, John's very, very funny. If you've seen his TED talk and laugh for the entire time, that's him, he's exceptionally funny. He turns to CEO. He thinks he's making a joke. And he says, oh, so you don't wear seatbelts. And the guy's like, no, man, I saw your talk. I'm an optimist. Sean's like, no, you're something else, right? So optimism doesn't stop cars from hitting us or reality from impinging upon us. What we talk about here in the research is rational optimism, taking a realistic assessment in the present moment while maintaining a belief that our behavior matters, especially in the face of challenges. So for taking the nurse, for example, there will be hard days. Irrational optimism would say, everything's going to be fine. Our patients are going to be all cured and everything's going to

Starting point is 00:11:31 be good. That's irrational. And that's what makes you make terrible decisions in the future if you have no grip on reality in the present. Meanwhile, rational optimism says, hey, yes, This is challenging. And I believe that what I do next matters. Our brain has an incredible power of being able to see, it has a negativity bias. We're able to see all the problems and challenges in our life. We sometimes, in the midst of the busyness of life and the burnout we might be feeling, we lose track of the progress that we're making and those ways in which our behavior matters.

Starting point is 00:12:05 So what she was consciously doing that moment is reminding her brain of the other side of the story. That gives her a fuller picture with strengthens. her and then hopefully helps her do a better job. So not ignoring reality at all. But there are other things that can affect the way you look at the world, your optimism or pessimism, things like the weather or the news or there's other influences coming at us. I did a series of studies with Ariana Huffington looking at the impact of negative news on the brain. In the first study, we just exposed people to three minutes of negative news and then the control group was three minutes of neutral news.

Starting point is 00:12:42 And then we tested them on a whole host of performance and mood metrics. And what we found is what you would expect, which is that when people were exposed to just three minutes of negative news, they experienced a drop in some of those metrics. What made the study amazing is that we actually tested them six to eight hours later, six to eight hours after exposure. So as they're closing their laptop at the end of the day or they're picking up their kids from school, those that have been exposed to just three minutes of negative news had a 27 percent, increased likelihood of reporting their day as negative. And that's dramatic.

Starting point is 00:13:17 But here's the hopeful part. We then ran a follow-up study. We found that when you don't just expose people to problems, but you go on to append a solution or a set of solutions that they could themselves engage in to help solve that problem, just get them thinking about it. We found that those people exhibited 20% better creative problem-solving skills later on. So just getting people to think about the solutions, makes them smarter and better. And as leaders at organizations, as a parent who's guiding their

Starting point is 00:13:46 kid through some challenges they're going through in school, just having those conversations around what they can do about it transforms the brain and fuels their performance. There is something I've noticed very alluring or contagious about pessimism. You know how, you know, a group of people in a room, one person can just suck the air out of the room. it's a lot harder for an optimist to bring everybody up. They can do it, but it's easier to bring everybody down. Yes, for years, I was asked, who's more powerful?

Starting point is 00:14:22 Is it the positive person or is it the negative person when it comes to creating culture around them? And so I scour the research, two decades of it. And what I found, it's actually, it's not the most positive person, but it's not the most negative person either. It's the person who's most expressive of their mindset. So I think that's really hopeful for optimists or people who are trying to cultivate a more rationally optimistic mindset is that you actually have tremendous power to influence the people around you. It's constantly happening all the time. We just sometimes forget our power.

Starting point is 00:14:52 There was a phenomenal study done at the University of California Riverside. And there they took groups of strangers. So sets of three people who didn't know each other put them in a room for two minutes to sit together in silence. and they tested their mood and mindset before and after those two minutes. And what they found over and over with the groups of people was that the person in the room who was the most non-verbally expressive of their mood and mindset actually significantly influenced the mood and mindset of the other two people. And what I mean by that is the person who, if they were sitting there and they had a scowl in their face

Starting point is 00:15:31 or they looked otherwise negative, they actually made the other two people feel more negative. Meanwhile, if they were relaxed or smiling, they actually made the other two people feel more positive. So that is in two minutes in silence. We've seen study after study that shows that an individual has the ability to change the ecosystem around them. The thing is, though, oftentimes we are so tuned in to that negative person who's influencing us that we're not seeing the ways in which we are positively influencing other people. I want to find out more about how the most expressive person is the one who influences the room, and we'll do that when we come back.

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Starting point is 00:16:30 When I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the kids. community. Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my head of office has a forever setting. An IG Private Wealth Advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IDPrivatewealth.com. We're talking about optimism or resilient optimism to be precise. My guest is Michelle Gieland. She's a positive psychology researcher and speaker, former anchor of the CBS Morning News, and author of the book, Resilient Optimism. So Michelle, I like what you said that it's not necessarily,

Starting point is 00:17:19 because I've always thought it was, that it's the negative person that can just suck the air out of the room, but that it's the most expressive person, optimistic or pessimistic. And that seems right, because I do know people who are optimistic and who have that energy that can really rally people together, and they're very expressive. We did a study with Training Magazine. We found that 31% of people are actually optimistic. They're not expressive of their mindset. And what I think is so powerful about that, that means one in three people sitting around you,

Starting point is 00:17:55 they just need a license from you to speak up. Like, hey, make it part of the culture. We say good things around here. We talk about the good more than the, you know, we complain or whatever. And so by modeling it, I think you encourage other people to match and kind. Oh, and I do have to say one other thing because I think this is so fascinating. So I did a deeper dive on this research data set that we have. I've been collecting now over the last 11 years responses for more than 25,000 business professionals

Starting point is 00:18:27 looking at their optimism and a host of other things and their positive expressivity and I found something so telling. Eight and ten people still call themselves optimists that stayed steady over time, but they are significantly less likely to behave like optimists. Specifically, if someone presents a new idea, they're less likely to say something positive. If they start a conversation, they're less likely to start with something positive. If they're thinking optimistic thoughts these days, they're less likely to say it to anybody else. If we don't behave like optimist, we're not sending out those signals to other people. we're not giving them evidence of progress and possibility.

Starting point is 00:19:03 And ultimately, we're dampening everybody's performance. Ain't that the truth. And everybody can relate to what you're saying. But maybe there are times where you just need to bitch and complain. You know, like you're just fed up and you just need to get it off your chest. Is there any evidence that that's a good thing to do? Are you better off shutting up and going doing something else? Oh, anecdotally, I can tell you, that's a good.

Starting point is 00:19:29 good thing to do. You should absolutely be in touch with your emotions. And I mean, hopefully you do it in a socially appropriate way in a way that's helpful to the people around you and not just bringing everyone down. We're human beings. And so it is very natural to ebb and flow through a range of emotions. And we don't want to just stuff those inside because then all of a sudden we're eating a cupcake at two in the morning. You know, it shows them in other ways. What I think, where I think this research gets really powerful is just is, and where I use it in. in my life is I go through the full range of emotions, but I can get back to a place of peace and capability and optimism more quickly because I employ these behaviors. So yes, go out,

Starting point is 00:20:16 grab a beer with your friend and complain to your heart's content. But understand that if you bring that into the office on a regular basis, you're being toxic and it's going to have a negative effect on other people. If you're complaining at Thanksgiving dinner, guess what? No one's going to want to have Thanksgiving dinner with you anymore. So we have to be realistic about the influence we have on other people. At the same time, we don't want to deny the human experience and not be real about what we're feeling. I often wonder if the people who very reliably start complaining and moaning and groaning bring the room down, if they know it, they're doing if they understand the effect they're having on other people.

Starting point is 00:21:01 Not all the time. I mean, sometimes they know they're happy to be the contrarian and all the things, but a lot of times they don't know. They don't realize that A, it's become a habit, B, it's negatively affecting everyone else. And so it takes reminders, and sometimes it takes something as bold as someone saying, this is the effect you're having, having on people. So I worked with this one manager at one point during consulting engagement, and he said to me, I'm totally lost. I don't know what to do here because I have one team member and we're a small team and she just comes to meetings and destroys the mood. And it's having an effect on like when we're having brainstorming sessions. We can't, we just can't get

Starting point is 00:21:48 off the ground like because she's just out of the gate. She's already complaining about stuff. and yet she's a nice good person, right? So he said, so we talked through what she could do, he could do with her and, you know, he tried to lead her through some positive questions, wasn't working. And finally, I said to her, how much social capital do you have with her? How comfortable do you feel sitting her down, probably on a Friday afternoon, and saying, we all care about you. I have been thinking about your effect on this office, and I want to offer you an idea or a thought. and he just put it out there.

Starting point is 00:22:24 And then he gave her the weekend to think through it. And she came in on Monday and, you know, it was a little awkward at first, of course. But she finally, by like around lunchtime, came to him and said, I heard what she said. I heard what she said. And I'm going to, I thought about it all weekend. I'm going to try to show up differently. And to her credit, she did make a big move. So she wasn't being fake because authenticity is so important with all this.

Starting point is 00:22:47 But she thought, she had that separation between thinking something, and just letting it come out of her mouth. And she started to employ a filter that helped her change, not only how she was what she was emoting to everybody else, but also how she saw her experience at work. She's like, actually, there's a lot of nice people here. And actually, we are making progress and stuff. And actually, these ideas people are presenting are not all terrible.

Starting point is 00:23:09 And her perception started to change. But it took social capital from her boss and an open heart from her. But do you think some people are just naturally optimistic that they don't have to do the work. It just, they came pre-wired. There is a predisposition, sort of a genetic predisposition towards optimism. We have seen it in the research,

Starting point is 00:23:34 but that is just a small part of the story. And I think that if we fall back to say, oh, well, I was born a pessimist, I'll always be a pessimist, you are shortchanging yourself, the opportunity to change and to benefit. There was a study done with, grumpy older gentleman pessimists. These are guys that had been practicing pessimism for seven

Starting point is 00:23:56 and eight decades of their life. Researchers asked them just catalog three good things from the day and keep up that practice daily. After two weeks, the gentleman who had tested as moderate-level pessimist began testing as moderate-level optimist. Those that kept up the practice for six months actually began testing as even higher optimists from there. So it shows us that we can change our brain at any time. And when we do so, we see that optimism doesn't just drive our well-being. It drives our performance as well, greater productivity, energy, we live longer, you're more likely to survive a cancer diagnosis. It's literally across the board. So in my opinion, it is the best investment you can make, whether you're already genetically predisposed to higher levels of

Starting point is 00:24:46 optimism or you are that grumpy old pessimist who has been doing it for a long time. It doesn't matter where you're starting places. There is so much room for growth no matter what. Well, you have a unique take on optimism that's different than I think most people think of when they think of optimism, which is, you know, look on the bright side, you know, the glasses have full. Yours is much more based in action and behavior. I've been talking with Michelle Gieland. She's a positive psychology researcher and speaker, former anchor of the CBS Morning News, and the name of her book is, Resilient Optimism. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for being here, Michelle. Thanks, Mike, for having me. I've really had a fun time with you. Thank you.

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Starting point is 00:26:04 Bring it with SAP Grow. AI Cloud ERP for any size business. If you want to understand, how the food business works, take a good look at a box of breakfast cereal. It's food, of course, but it's also a carefully designed marketing

Starting point is 00:26:25 machine. There are cartoons for kids, promises of vitamins and whole grains for parents, and often a surprising amount of sugar inside. And somehow it all gets packaged together as breakfast. So how healthy

Starting point is 00:26:41 or unhealthy is cereal? Is a bowl of sugary cereal better than no breakfast at all? And what can cereal teach us about how food companies influence what we eat and even what we think is good for us? Marion Nestle is a professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at NYU and one of the country's leading experts on food politics. She is author of several books, and her latest is sugar-coated,

Starting point is 00:27:11 unboxing the hidden forces shaping America's favorite breakfast food. Hey, Marion, welcome to something you should know. Oh, glad to be here. Do we know where breakfast cereal came from? Does it have a very specific origin? I have a sense it does. Oh, it absolutely does. And it's an amazing one in the late 1800s.

Starting point is 00:27:33 Just before 1900, John Harvey Kellogg had the idea that he wasn't actually the first. There were other people who had done... high fiber cereals before then. But he was the first one who really was able to put it together into a form that was edible. Whole wheat is very, very hard to digest. You have to kind of pound it and shape it and cook it a little bit and before people can eat it. And John Harvey Kellogg was very influenced by the Seventh-day Adventists and believed that if you ate a high-fiber series, It would solve all of your health problems. Health problems were considered to be digestive in those days.

Starting point is 00:28:23 Everything followed from digestion. And so a high fiber cereal would prevent dyspepsia, which is what they called it, and that would prevent a whole bunch of other things. And so he invented this cereal, and then his brother invented corn flakes, and they had lots and lots of personal problems between the two of the two of the cereal. between the two of them about owning the property and selling the foods. John Harvey Kellogg was a health guru, and his brother, W.K., was much more interested in selling cereals to the masses, and he wanted to put sugar in it. Lots of sugar, but his brother wouldn't

Starting point is 00:29:06 let him. And the sugary cereals didn't really start until John Harvey Kellogg died. The word cereal today, when you say that word, it means for most people breakfast cereal, but it didn't mean it then until when it was just getting started. So what did the word cereal mean? Well, it meant grains, basically. It was a synonym for grains and all grains. It included corn and still does. It included rye and sorghum and all of those things.

Starting point is 00:29:39 But the breakfast cereals are mainly oats. corn, and wheat. And part of what the marketing of breakfast cereals was about was, first of all, to convince Americans that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and that breakfast meant cold, ready to eat cereals. And they did a great job of that. What did people eat before breakfast cereal? If it wasn't bacon and eggs or waffles, what was it?

Starting point is 00:30:10 Well, they ate whatever they could get their hands on. I mean, food was always scarce, and you ate leftovers from dinner the night before. You ate what you could. Oh, I mean, if you had money, you had bacon and eggs and pancakes and things like that. But, you know, you just, you ate whatever. You go all over the world. Lots of people don't eat breakfast on what we consider to be breakfast cereals. And the first breakfast cereal that was put in a box and a name was put on the box, what was it?

Starting point is 00:30:47 I think it was something called granula. And that was before the Kellogg cereals came out. But the mass marketed ones were the Kellogg cereals of one kind or another, the ones that were really wildly popular and sold all over the place. And what were those? Well, that was cornflank. was one of the first. All brand dates in 1919. I mean, by the early 1900s, there were something like 70 serial companies in Battle Creek, Michigan. The smaller ones died out, and they were left with Kellogg's and Post. But the, you know, I mean, and then General Mills

Starting point is 00:31:33 came in, but that was not necessarily in Battle Creek. And was it poppy? And was it poppy? right away, the idea of breakfast cereal? Well, it was popular among the wellness crowd. John Harvey Kellogg ran a sanatorium in Battle Creek that was a sort of famous place where people who had dyspepsia went to get their dyspepsia cured. And it was kind of an amazing place. I mean, I think Kellogg was way ahead of his time in promoting fiber. He was an early fiber maxer.

Starting point is 00:32:10 But there's a terrific movie called The Road to Wellville, which seems highly exaggerated but is amazingly close to what that sanatorium was actually pretty much like. And very good books have been written about this. It's just fascinating to read about. These were health gurus in 1900. the early 1900s, very much, and a lot of what they were talking about sounds very much like the wellness entrepreneurs now.

Starting point is 00:32:47 The idea of cereal being for the wellness crowd, being healthy, and I guess there are, you know, certain cereals that when I hear their names, I think, yeah, those are the healthy cereals, some granola and grape nuts and those kind of things. But for the most part, they seem like kid food to me. Oh, they are. And that couldn't happen until John Harvey Kellogg died. When he died, it then became possible to dump sugar into cereals, to color them up, to market them directly to children, and to do all of those things that we raise our eyebrows about now. You know, I've got a consecutive series of color copies of, uh, uh, you know, I've got a consecutive series of color copies of, uh, fruit loops boxes dating back to 1963. And in 1963, Kellogg introduced fruit loops. It was brightly colored with neon colors with the petroleum dyes that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Starting point is 00:33:52 is trying so hard to get rid of now and succeeding to a considerable extent. And loaded with sugar. And a tablespoon of sugar per ounce, it was, that's how. half the calories and half the weight. Wow, a tablespoonful of sugar per ounce in fruit loops. Yeah. I mean, that's how it started. And that's most, you know, the cereal companies have, under pressure,

Starting point is 00:34:23 cereal companies have tried as hard as they can to get the sugar down. And the limit seems to be about 12 grams per ounce. So the 12 grams per ounce is, okay, that's not quite fit. 50% is 40% of the calories. And kids love that. Well, of course. Who wouldn't love that? Who does not?

Starting point is 00:34:46 Well, I find them too sweet. And they have off flavors to me from all the stuff they add to them. It was in the late 50s, early 60s that cereals were aimed specifically at children. You know, your kids will have a nutritious breakfast because we've added all these vitamins. And yeah, we threw in a little sugar. because otherwise they wouldn't eat it. Well, what about those claims that they've added vitamins and things? Is that not a good thing, or is that just a marketing thing?

Starting point is 00:35:17 Oh, I think it's marketing. I mean, Americans are not vitamin deprived. They're really not. I mean, the big problem in American diets is that people eat too much. And if you're eating enough calories, you're probably getting enough vitamins unless you're not eating any vegetables at all. So I don't see these vitamins. being a problem but the vitamins and some of the cereals are essentially they're

Starting point is 00:35:44 essentially vitamin supplemented cookies is what they are what about the cereals that you don't necessarily consider sugary kid cereals like cornflakes cornflakes to me is not but there is sugar in it right oh very little you know very very little as compared to the kids cereal. I think there's four grams per ounce or something like that. It's, I would consider that minimal sugar. And then frosted flakes, which is the same thing only with lots of sugar, I guess. Well, that'll be in the 11 and 12 grams per ounce category. You know, and that's the industry standard for sweeten cereals. You know, I'm, I like post-shrered wheat, the mini ones, and it doesn't have any sugar in.

Starting point is 00:36:35 it at all. It's a one ingredient cereal, wheat, and I add my own sugar. I think it needs, I think a little sugar helps, but I'm not adding 12 grams. You know, it's interesting to me, and the same is true with soda, is when they say that there's all this sugar in it, why does it have to, because as you say, when you have a bowl of shredded wheat and you sprinkle a teaspoon of sugar on it, it seems like plenty. So why isn't it plenty when they put sugar in it when they make it? Well, I think they're covering up the off tastes that must come from the other additives that are in there. Or actually, it's the vitamins don't taste good. If they're, you know, supplemental vitamins, they really don't. So they have to cover up the vitamin and mineral taste. And the sugar, and the sugar does

Starting point is 00:37:31 that, you know, the shredded wheat doesn't have vitamins in it, so they don't have to cover up anything. As you say, the marketing to kids started in the 60s, I think, and so what happened between the late 1800s and the 60s was cereal just kind of humming along, and some people bought it? And some people didn't. I mean, yeah, they bought it. I mean, I have facsimiles of all brand. going back to 1919. And in 1919, it was already being advertised as something that would help your digestion and prevent dyspepsia and that sort of thing. And that was, you know, that had a little bit of sugar at it, but very, very little. And Allbrand still has only a little.

Starting point is 00:38:23 It really hasn't. I mean, that's a recipe that hasn't changed. Cornflakes recipe hasn't changed in all of these years. And the original, original Cheerios recipe hasn't really changed, except that Cheerios has expanded into 20 different versions, many of which are loaded with sugar. But the original has sugar, but it's not tons of sugar. It's just not much. It's just not much. And Cheerios is still a very popular brand with people, so it is possible to make a cereal

Starting point is 00:38:54 without a lot of sugar like cornflakes and Cheerios that people seem to like. Yeah, or Wheaties. Those are the old ones, and people do like them, and sometimes they add sugar. I like fruit with mine. And they still work. But the big sellers, the big sellers are the sugary cereals, the really big sellers. And that started in the 60s, probably not unrelated to the fact that that's when television was really taking on. Sure, because they could advertise.

Starting point is 00:39:26 There's a whole book about advertising cereals on television. television. Somebody wrote a book about it. And the cereal box itself was a big marketing tool, I suspect. Oh, right from the beginning. They're big. You know, we call them billboards. Because every single thing that is on that box is either there because it has to be there by FDA regulation or it's got to have a QR code for retailers. The rest of it is all marketing, and it's an enormous amount of marketing space. So every single thing that's on the front of the package is designed to attract people to buy it. And the back of the package has, you know, all the stuff you can read while you're eating your cereal in the morning.

Starting point is 00:40:18 Games for kids. I sense from listening to you talk that you're not a big fan of the sugary cereals, but what's the big deal if you have them once in a while? Oh, once in a while, it's not a big deal at all. That's true of any food. But the question that comes up instantly is when did it become okay to feed kids vitamins supplemented cookies for breakfast? I mean, you wouldn't think, or most people would not think about giving their kids cookies for breakfast. You know, that's, you want your child to have something nutritious with a little protein in it and, you know, something that's going to get them through the next few hours when

Starting point is 00:41:01 they're in school. You certainly wouldn't feed them dessert, and these are essentially desserts. I don't think in the 60s and 70s people thought a whole lot about this. The theory was or the thinking was the kids should have breakfast and cereal's easy, and so that's a good breakfast. Oh, and don't forget the milk. Yeah, and the milk. This was a cereal was an excuse to get kids to drink their milk because the word was out that dairy products were essential and that kids needed three glasses of milk a day, preferably adults too. And so this was a way to get kids to get milk and get all the vitamins and minerals that are in milk and then have the cereal too. and they would be getting, you know, some things that they need.

Starting point is 00:41:57 But most of the kids' cereals are very low in fiber. You know, and one of the reasons for eating cereal is fiber. And by 1970, there were already congressional hearings complaining about the amount of how non-nutricious breakfast cereals were, how they were being marketed to kids, and how they had way, way, way, way too much sugar in them. And that was 1970, congressional hearings. Are cereals as popular today as ever, or have people kind of gotten the message and maybe backed off or what?

Starting point is 00:42:41 Well, it turns out that cereal sales are way down, and it's an enormous problem for the industry. And they're way down for the same reasons. that all other foods are down. You know, the food industry is undergoing a period of decreasing sales because Robert F. Kennedy Jr. thinks that they're poisoning America. People are concerned, I think, rightfully about ultra-processed foods and want to cut back on ultra-processed foods.

Starting point is 00:43:16 Inflation has made the cost of cereal amazing. It's just doubled in the last few years. And then there are GLP1 drugs, and people who are on GLP1 drugs are eating less, which is very bad for business. And they're also cutting down on things that have a lot of sugar in them. And then on top of that, everybody's lifestyle makes getting a bowl down, putting cereal in it, adding milk, eating it with a spoon, and then having a bowl to wash afterwards, just seems like a lot of trouble to a lot of people who much prefer Pop-Tarts

Starting point is 00:44:02 or something else that they can just grab and go. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's always been the thing, is it better to not eat any breakfast or is it better to eat a sugary breakfast? Oh, well, always it's a question of, what you're comparing it to and what else you're eating. If the only sugary food you had during the day was your cereal for breakfast, nobody would be the slightest bit concerned about it.

Starting point is 00:44:32 But if everything you're eating during the day is loaded with sugar and is not a vegetable, then you're going to be concerned about the overall balance and the diet. You know, the secret of good nutrition is eating a balanced diet, And that means foods from every possible group and great variety in not very large portions. My understanding is that it was one of the Kellogg brothers or somebody in the cereal business marketing people that came up with this idea that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Oh, yeah, they did a lot of research on that. And it's interesting because I'm not a breakfast eater. You know, and I'm, you know, at various times in my career, I've given lectures and people have

Starting point is 00:45:19 asked what I had for breakfast. And I say, well, I don't really eat breakfast. I don't get hungry until about 11 o'clock in the morning. And people are just shocked, absolutely shocked, a nutritionist who doesn't eat breakfast. But I've had people come up to me with tears in their eyes saying, thank you. I never want to eat first thing in the morning. and I've always just forced myself, and now I won't anymore. I thought, well, I've done some good.

Starting point is 00:45:49 So what's your message here to wrap things up? What do you want people to understand about this business? The cereal business is like any other food business, and its purpose is to sell cereals. So in a sense, using cereals as an example, you generalize from that to every other food products, It's just that, you know, I picked cereals with my co-author to, because the boxes are so amazing and so much is known about them. And the marketing is so obvious.

Starting point is 00:46:29 The way the companies use nutrients, the way they use health claims, the way they use the political system, the way they market to special population groups are all exactly. examples, you know, just beautifully illustrated examples of how food marketing works, regardless of the health quality of the product. Cereal's not the worst health product, you know, the worst food product by any means. But it's sure a good example of how you turn some sugary product into something that everybody thinks they must have and eat for breakfast for heaven's sake. I imagine there are very few people listening to us right now who don't have at least one box of cereal in their kitchen somewhere. So it's really interesting to hear the story of breakfast cereal and what's really in them.

Starting point is 00:47:21 I've been talking to Marian Nestle. She is a professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at NYU, and one of the country's leading experts on food politics. The name of her book is Sugarcoated, Unboxing the Hidden Forces, shaping America's favorite breakfast food. There's the link to her book in the show notes, and Marian, always a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Starting point is 00:47:43 Happy to be here. If you're going to take a walk sometime during the day, right after eating may be one of the best times to do it. Research has found that walking for as little as two to five minutes after a meal can help keep your blood sugar from spiking as high as it would if you simply stayed seated. The reason is surprisingly simple. When your muscles start working, they use some of the glucose that's entering your bloodstream from your meal.

Starting point is 00:48:15 You don't have to walk fast or work up a sweat or even go very far. Even a leisurely trip around the block can make a measurable difference. And newer research suggests a post-meal walk may also help food move through your stomach more efficiently, reducing that overly full feeling some people get after eating. So instead of immediately settling in on the couch after dinner, taking even a short stroll may be one of the easiest and healthy habits you can adopt. And that is something you should know. And if you're taking that walk with somebody else,

Starting point is 00:48:50 you might tell them about this podcast so they can listen and we get a new listener. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to something you should know. Two soldiers. Come on, boy. bonded for life When anyone else would quit It's just you and me boy They'll use all their skills

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