Just today I wrote to 3 cereal manufacturers, i.e. General Mills, Post & Kellogg's to ask for less or no sugar at all in their cereals, or at very least could they replace the sugar content with sucralose. As a type 2 diabetic I have to read all cereal labels for sugar content before buying. Presently there only as two cereals I can eat, Shredded Wheat or Spoon-sized shredded wheat or regular Cheerios which contains 1 gram of sugar per serving, according to the box.

Very very disturbing to see children having sooooo much sugar.
Even healthfood cereal has sugar in it.
Bananas as sweetner is good enough!

would you trust a company (general mills) that is owned by a tobacco company??? Me neither.

I found the best way to make sure my kids arent getting to much sugar in their ceral is to not buy the sugar coated ones.... I do thnk we should have a standardized portion size so that such cheeky tactics wont be as easy to be used....

I can't believe the negative comments here towards Health Canada and legislators. Clearly the culprit is the cereal producer for showing not only a lack of ethical leadership but downright dishonesty.

We did have standard serving sizes. We really need to stop looking to the U.S. concerning everything. They have huge problems with social injustices and foreign policies. How about we just establish regulations without loopholes in the wording. No variances granted. For the sake of children and their nutrition. Period.
Let's consider making minute oatmeal and adding our own brown sugar and cinnamon. It would take 1 more minute in the microwave. Can we spare that for superior nutrients and fibre?

What's more disturbing than the manipulation of the nutrition labels is that parents would actually ever believe these cereals nutritious at all, instead of seeing what they really are...candy.

It seems a lot of education is in order. It is obvious the average consumer does not understand the problems with high sugar intake or how to interpret. Why does it often take a report like this to make people wake up. Maybe this type of problem solving should be in the classroom of elementary schools.

Wendy's findings on sugar in cereal says as much about our stupid labelling laws as it does cereal maker ethics. The government should have mandated a standard serving size of 100g or 100ml which you can find at US govt. websites.

As an example of truly idiotic labelling, I have encountered sweetened drinks in 500ml bottles that list serving sizes of 240ml or frozen fruit per 140ml! Such labels are intended to baffle not inform.

Interesting show on the content of sugar in kids cereals.
For the first time ever, I purchased a box of Fibre 1 Raisin Bran Clusters also made by the same maker as the kids cereals. I was interested in how much fibre per serving so hadn't read all of the ingredients until the other day. I was shocked to see that half way down the list was Trisodium phosphate. To my knowledge this is a cleaning agent most commonly used to wash walls before painting. I contacted Canada Food and Drug and received an email from them giving me a website address on which to check all the acceptable food additives. After looking through hundreds of them I never found trisodium phosphate so assume it is not acceptable. I contacted Food and Drug again and received another address on which to check what office in my city I should contact. I plan on writing to that office this week regarding this matter.

This is another example of the government pretending to legislate to protect canadians, with the corporations affected pretending to comply. Any halfway intelligent person can see that you have to proscribe a serving size if a set amount of sugar is to have any meaning. Citizens be warned-the politician saying all the right things, might just have a trick up their sleeve.

I am disgusted with General Mills. Cutting their portion sizes instead of sugar. What are they thinking? Do they think we don't read labels? We do and deception does not rank high on a list of what to buy - there are many choices.
Is there anything we, as the public, can do to get the point across?

So many obese children, it's just the saddest thing that there are so many people more interested in the bottom line than the people who buy the product. I think that with the current economic situation that companies like that will suffer more than most - at least I hope so!

Dear Marketplace,

Perhaps a story on why it is that our supposedly "best in the world" labeling laws allows for such manipulation of a nutrition facts panel would be in order?

While certainly unscrupulous, I don't blame the corporate food world for trying to ensure they can reach as large an audience as possible - after all, that's their job.

I do however blame Health Canada's laxity in allowing for the publication of non-standardized serving sizes on nutrition facts panels and for other such offenses (like allowing different types of sugar to be listed separately in the ingredients list so as not to have sugar become the first or second ingredient but rather then 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th and 10th).

Warm regards,

Yoni Freedhoff, MD