Todays ruling from Advertising Standards Agency on Kellogg's

You may remember a while back I was jumping up and down about the horrible coco pop advert on the bus stop opposite the school I teach at. I was particularly incensed because the cartoon monkey was in school uniform and the strap line was encouraging kids to eat even more of the sugary cereal than they usually do by encouraging them to eat it after school.

The Children's Food Campaign got lots of emails about this ad and so we decided to complain to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). It is worth bearing in mind that this particular cereal is over one third sugar, so unhealthy is is banned from schools and not allowed to be advertised on children's TV. We thought that given Coco Pops is heavily marketed as a breakfast cereal the advert was clearly designed to encourage children to eat an additional bowl. The ASA disagreed and have said that Kellogg's are not being "socially irresponsible". You can see their ruling here

I was invited on to the Today programme to discuss this and have also written a blog for the Guardian, "comment is free" website. It is creating a lively debate. Not for the first time my parenting skills have been called into question!

One of the points that I have yet to get across it the fact that Kellogg's claim a bowl of Coco pops is a "moderate" snack that is comparable to a banana or a yoghurt. However they base this on a 30 g serving. A 30 g serving is tiny - most kids and parents routinely pour much larger servings. My own son when asked to estimate 30 g poured out a helping of 72 g which didn't look especially huge when in the bowl.

Thankfully the Department of Health appear to be taking this more seriously. They have told us that will be meeting Kellogg's to discuss our concerns with them. It is vital for the sucess of Change4Life that commericial partners are not allowed to undermine the importance of a healthy diet