To wonder who is buying chocolate cereal

[Blueyseviltwin]

Who om each is buying Lion bar and Oreo cereal? See also lucky charms, nesquick and coco pops
These aren't breakfast foods (or any sort of food). I literally cannot imagine anyone thinking it is a reasonable way of feeding children?

I would probably avoid France if I were you. Having grown up there we are the kings of chocolate, sugary breakfasts. We even sell specially shaped chocolate to fit into a baguette!!

My kids get Lion cereal bar for their snack at school very often. Before you start clutching your pearls they get plenty of fruit and vegetables and I mostly cook from scratch. Jesus, as if we needed to be judged for this as well. 🙄

I can 100% guarantee your kids will be the ones who pig out at birthdays parties or sneaky off to spend every pound they get on sweets when they're a bit older.

It's so sad to see and you are the cause of it.

I broadly agree with this. I am horrified by the sheer range of these products available, and I do worry that some children are eating them habitually rather than occasionally. But yes, in moderation everything's fine -- I let my kids try coco pops for the first time recently while we were staying with relatives who had them and neither child liked them at all, which was an easy win. However, kids really differ. If I have a problem with mine it's that one won't eat anything very much, so over indulging is a non-issue, and the other would enjoy a diet of butter, butter, butter, and smoked salmon but isn't especially interested in sweets. Not all kids are the same, though, and some would absolutely want to eat Oreo cereal every single morning and wouldn't want to stop at one bowl. Very tricky to have the cereal in the house and not restrict its consumption without approaching the issue from a 'good food, bad food' view point, which many (including several on this thread) think is damaging in itself. I think it's complex, and I guess the side I come down on is that advertising these products to kids, and promoting them as containing vitamins and minerals and being a suitable product for breakfast makes life really hard for parents whose children are predisposed to want to eat a lot of them routinely.

In my 20s I used to buy Coco Pops if I had a nasty cold / fever and eat the box over the 3 days or so it took me to feel better, get out of bed and return to normal life.

(My oncologist also suggested this type of cereal when I was having chemo and radiotherapy but I couldn’t stomach anything.)

@Sahara123 I love crunchy nut
corn flakes! Preferably dry ( no milk) and fresh. Delicious.

@Blueyseviltwin "no food is banned in our house"
So you buy cereal then?

Because she doesn’t give them cereal for breakfast they will pig out at parties or potentially have disordered eating?

My DD needed coco pops to get food (and calcium in the milk) into her before school. It was either that or a screaming hangry meltdown.

I've never touched the stuff, her brother doesn't eat it either.

Tbf also kings of eating regular healthy meals instead of non stop snacking so you got some things right:)

Sunday treat cereal!

You are by far the superior parent clearly. Or Jamie Oliver.

A pulled pork, salad snd wedges,

Jacket potatoes

Curry/ chilli

It used to be a holiday treat in our house, but kids are not that into choc cereal any longer. I quite like a dark chocolate granola as a holiday treat.

Id never give them to my son for breakfast. Maybe as a treat snack but can’t bring myself to buy them!

We don’t buy them because no one in the house likes or eats cereal!
I also do prefer to offer a more rounded nutritional breakfast because I’m fairly sure ds buys crap for his school lunch. I’m okay with that because I know he’s had a decent breakfast and a sensible dinner!
Not judging anyone else who gives cereal, none of my dc ever ate it with the exception of dc1 liking porridge.
When I used to look at cereals to buy to try a lot of them were full of added sugar and didn’t have as much as I thought they would have things like fibre etc, quite poor in the nutrition area. Might have changed now, I haven’t looked in 10 years!

Aww not had an 'evils of cereal' thread for a couple of weeks! Was about time we had one.

To be honest OP, I think going in with chocolate cereal is a bit weak. The proper cereal nuts enjoy telling us how Weetabix, bran flakes and ready brek is literal child abuse.

4/10 for effort.
8/10 for outrage.

Pop Tarts though.

🤤

So: nothing sweet. No birthday cake.
Your friends serve pulled pork at children's parties do they? 🤔

Students.

In fairness, if you look at the ingredients they're no worse than a lot of other cereal. I'm afraid I like crunchy nut granola whenever I'm bored of porridge. That has chocolate bits in them.

This just isn't true. I was brought up in precisely the way @Blueyseviltwin describes and all that happened is that I developed a taste for healthy options and a basic understanding of nutrition. SOME children might react as you describe -- but those children might also struggle with moderation if those foods were habitually available in the home.

You were "aghast" because you saw chocolate cereal available for sale in a supermarket? Really? Was this your first time in a supermarket?

Christ on a bike, OP if the mere existence of chocolate cereal is enough to shock you to your very core then it's amazing that you manage to leave your house or browse the Internet without succumbing to an attack of the vapours.

Have you ever been to a party? I'm just imagining turning up at the local bouncy castle place to find it is lentil curry for all the 3 year olds

I think the last one was being horrified at the occasional McDonald's, which was going to result in the demise of civilisation.

It probably would be, but as PP, he’s also ASD and eats a very limited range of food. Getting him to eat anything is a milestone. I’m sure you know how nauseous ADHD meds can make children, so this is the lesser of two evils.

I’d bloody love to have the time to make him breakfast in the morning, but unfortunately that is a luxury that I just don’t have, because you know, I actually have to go to work typically about an hour before he gets up.