Kellog's Frosted Beefs

Via Flikr

Last week, I blogged about crushed beetles in Starbucks "vegan" smoothies.

Today, my friend and fellow blogger Neil (who is a vegetarian) found something interesting in the Kellog's UK product site.

It seems you can search cereals and other products by ingredient.

Here's "Beef":

Wait, what?

From the Frosted Wheats ingredients page:

"Shredded Wholewheat, Sugar, Humectant (Sorbitol), Beef Gelatin, Niacin, Iron, Vitamin B6, Riboflavin (B2), Thiamin (B1), Folic Acid, Vitamin B12."

Gelatine ("it's made from bones, you know") is a common food additive and a real pest to vegetarians.

But wait! There's more.

He also searched "pork":

Yep. Rice Crispies Squares have pig in them:

"Toasted Rice Cereal (35%) (Rice, Sugar, Salt, Barley Malt Flavouring, Niacin, Iron, Vitamin B6, Riboflavin (B2), Thiamin (B1), Folic Acid, Vitamin B12), Marshmallow (33%) (Glucose Syrup, Sugar, Pork Gelatin, Flavouring), Fructose, Vegetable Oil, Invert Sugar Syrup, Glucose Syrup, Humectant (Glycerol), Flavouring (Contains Milk), Emulsifier (E472e, E472a), Antioxidant (E320)."

I'm not a vegetarian, and I have no problem with animal products in my foods. But many people are, and do. Including, ironically, health nut John Harvey Kellogg, who once said:

“A dead cow or sheep lying in the pasture is recognized as carrion. The same sort of carcass dressed and hung up in a butcher’s stall passes as food.”

The UK site even has a whole section recommending vegetarian diets for young children.

The Canadian and US sites aren't as easy to navigate by ingredient, and searches for beef or pork take you to meatloaf recipes.

However, I did find this on the American site:

What is the source of gelatin in your products? 

Gelatin, which is used in some of our products to provide texture, is derived from either beef or pork. Products containing pork gelatin include Kellogg cereal products with marshmallow additives (i.e., Kellogg's® Marshmallow Froot Loops cereal and Kellogg's Smorz® cereal) and all varieties of Kellogg's® Rice Krispies Treats® Squares. Products containing beef gelatin include all varieties of Kellogg's® Frosted Pop-Tarts®, Kellogg's® Frosted Mini-Wheats® cereal, Kellogg's® Rice Krispies Treats cereal, and the Kellogg's® Fruit-Flavored Snacks that contain gelatin. 

The information provided here is intended to act as a general guide only. We ask that you always check the Nutrition Facts on the side panel of each of our packages to determine if the product contains any ingredient(s) that you want to avoid.

The moral of the story? Animal products show up in the strangest places. When you buy packaged foods, always read the ingredients list. (And always be suspicious of terms like "natural" flavour or colour.) If you're a vegan, vegetarian, Hindu, Jew or Muslim, you may be surprised how often you're breaking your vows.

Fortified with Tolstoy!

That's true! I have enriched my blog with a direct quote from Tolstoy's War and Peace! So now you won't just learn about advertising issues by reading this post, you'll become expert in Russian literature as well!

What, you say that you find my claims hard to believe? Why, just this morning I used shaving cream enriched with shea butter, and my skin already feels rejuvenated! (Yeah, I know it's girlie; my wife buys it.) Then I had some juice containing extract of the latest superfood, acai berries, and I can feel the antioxidants coursing through my veins!

Yeah, it's a load of crap. But people keep buying into the latest trend in botanicals, and manufacturers keep adding trace elements of it to their products. It's all a big charade, but regulators have had a hard time enforcing advertising claims about the efficacy of these ingredients.

So, why does the marketing work? The answer lies in what social scientists call "essentialist thinking". In layman's terms, this is the belief that there is an irreducible "essence" in things that makes them what they are, beyond being the sum of their parts. It's the principle behind homeopathic medicine, which "is generally defined as a system of medical treatment based on the use of minute quantities of remedies that in larger doses produce effects similar to those of the disease being treated". In products, it's the idea that any amount of a "magic" botanical substance can have a significant effect.

To a scientists, "natural" versus "artificial" is a meaningless distinction; everything in the world can be expressed as a sum of its basic components, no matter where they come from.

But most of us are not scientists. We're homeopaths. We want the latest miracle cure from Mother Nature, even if it's a total scam. After all, it couldn't hurt to try, could it?

I'm an adman, and I understand the need for consumer products to innovate. I just wish consumers themselves would take a dose of skepticism with their daily ration of hype.

But I've ranted enough for today. How's your Tolstoy education doing? I hope you benefited from the 0.5% War and Peace content I added to today's blog. It's from Chapter 19. It's my first line.