Buyers Beware - Especially When Packaging Focuses on Kids

Earlier in the week, I got an email containing this video on fake blueberries in breakfast cereals.  It  claimed that many cereals advertise to have the nutritional benefits of blueberries including antioxidants, contain no blueberries.  No, not one.  According to the video, the list of ingredients showed the purple bits were made from artificial colors and flavors.

On my next grocery shopping day, I checked this out and found it to be mostly false.

However, what I did find was disturbing.  My large-chain grocery store and General Mills offered the two boxes below near the end of the aisle, at a child's level with kid-appealing art work.   It implied berries (one purple and one pink), but there was not a berry to be found in the list of ingredients.

What General Mills has apparently learned is that many Moms and Dads are too distracted to read the ingredients when shopping with kids, and that children can exert lots of pressure to buy something aimed at them - truthful or not.

Buyers beware.