Kellogg’s Legal Challenge
Meg Hill / KJM Today Opinion
April 27, 2022
Kellogg’s is mounting a legal challenge against new Government rules that would stop some of the company’s cereals being prominently displayed in food stores.
The new regulations come into effect in England in October and restrict promotion of food and drink that is high in fat, salt and sugar.
Kellogg’s said in a statement that it has “tried to have a reasonable conversation with Government” without success. Chris Silcock, the company’s UK managing director, said: “We believe the formula being used by the Government to measure the nutritional value of breakfast cereals is wrong and not implemented legally. It measures cereals dry when they are almost always eaten with milk.
“All of this matters because, unless you take account of the nutritional elements added when cereal is eaten with milk, the full nutritional value of the meal is not measured.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said: “Breakfast cereals contribute 7% – a significant amount – to the average daily free sugar intakes of children.
“Restricting the promotion and advertising of less healthy foods is an important part of the cross-government strategy to halve childhood obesity by 2030, prevent harmful diseases and improve healthy life expectancy, so we can continue to level up health across the nation.”
The spokesman added that obesity costs the NHS more than £6 billion a year and is the second biggest cause of cancer in the UK.
© Meg Hill / PA Media
Image - J Kelloggs via PA Media
Kellogg's are one of the most well-established brands in the United Kingdom and arguably one of the best-loved also. The firm's breakfast cereals have been a staple of breakfast eating for longer than many of the current population has been alive.
So why is the sugar content now a problem?
The answer is that it is less of an issue than it has been made out to be. We British have been eating Kellogg's for a very long time but it is also only recently that we have been gaining weight.
Obesity, particularly among children, is undoubtedly one of the great concerns of our time but could that have more to do with successive governments (both Labour and Tory) allowing the indiscriminate sale of school playing fields? Of allowing schools to implement 'no winners' policies, so children aren't upset if they don't finish first in the egg-and-spoon race?
Not to mention the promotion of an unhealthy spread of fear over letting kids go out and play in the local park - or even on the street outside their homes - in case they should come to some kind of harm.
It is not just breakfast cereal that is causing kids to get fat. It is a combination of the points raised above, a huge increase in internet use where kids simply sit at home rather than getting exercise and yes, lazy parenting as well.
And on top of that, there is the sinister and continuing desire for 'mission creep';
of using health as an excuse to impose yet more government and state control over the lives of a previously free people.
A desire for control has been graphically illustrated over the past two years.
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