How Optimism Works in Tough Times & The Curious Story of Breakfast Cereal

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1:22Today on Something You Should Know, it's amazing how many people don't know what to do when they get a bloody nose. Do you? Then a better understanding of true optimism that will inspire and empower you. Optimism doesn't just drive our well-being, it drives our performance as well, greater productivity, energy, we live longer, you're more likely to survive a cancer diagnosis. So in my opinion, it is the best investment you can make. Also, what's the best time to go for a walk? And the story of cereal and how it became synonymous with a healthy breakfast. Cereal is not the worst food product by any means, but it's sure a good example of how you turn some sugary product into something that everybody thinks they must have and eat for breakfast, for heaven's sakes.

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3:41Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, please let them know it was something you should know. It's the best way to support our show. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. So if you or one of your kids or somebody gets a bloody nose, what do you do? There's a bit of misinformation floating around out there, so I'm going to tell you what the Mayo Clinic says you should do as we begin this episode of Something You Should Know.

4:28Hi, I'm Mike Carruthers. Welcome. So a lot of us were taught that when your nose starts to bleed, you should tilt your head backward. That actually is the opposite of what you're supposed to do. Tilting back does not stop the bleeding. It just sends the blood down your throat where you could swallow it, become nauseated, or even choke on it. Instead, you should sit upright, lean slightly forward, and pinch the soft part of your nose, not the hard, bony bridge. And here's the part many people get wrong. Hold it continuously for 10 to 15 minutes. Don't keep letting go every 30 seconds to see whether it has stopped, because every time you do that, you interfere with the clot that's trying to form.

5:17Most ordinary nosebleeds will stop this way, so remember forward, not backward, and pinch the soft part. That's one of those little pieces of first aid that almost everyone will eventually have a reason to use. And that is something you should know.

5:37Optimism sometimes gets a bad rap. We tend to think of it as looking on the bright side, seeing the glass half full, believing everything will somehow just work out. And if you're a pessimist, well, that can sound ridiculous. But there's another way to think about optimism that really struck a chord with me. Optimism isn't pretending things are better than they are. It isn't even a feeling. It's a set of behaviors, things you can actually do when life is difficult or uncertain or just not going your way. And research suggests that those behaviors can affect everything from stress and burnout to your health, your work, and even how you handle money.

6:21Michelle Geelan is a positive psychology researcher and speaker. She's a former anchor on the CBS Morning News and executive producer of The Happiness Advantage on PBS. She's author of a book called Resilient Optimism, The Science of Sustaining a Positive Mindset in Tough Times. Hi, Michelle. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Thanks for having me. Glad to be here. So I'd like you to define a term for me because I hear it a lot about having a positive mindset. And it's in the subtitle of your book, Sustaining a Positive Mindset in Tough Times. What is a positive mindset? A positive mindset is one that is fueled by hope, progress, and possibility.

7:06And so where traditional optimism is expecting good things to happen and having what could be a more fleeting feeling of, I've got this, I think I can do this. what I focus on in my research is this concept of resilient optimism, which is how you build a mindset that is strong based on the behaviors that you engage in so that your optimism stays strong when it's tested, even when the first plan fails or things don't work out as you're hoping, or you are just plain exhausted. You can go back to the set of behaviors which continually strengthen your optimism and make them more resilient. So can you give me an example of that in action?

7:45Yes. So I met a nurse and she worked in the ICU the day that I met her. Two patients had coded before noon and one actually didn't make it. And she showed me what her tool to keep her mindset hopeful, positive, and optimistic amidst days like this where she's not feeling at her best and not able to serve the patients as best as she would like. She would dip into the break room. In her locker was a folder. In the folder were notes and pictures from patients, caregivers, and their families thanking her for the work that she had done over the years and all the care that she had offered. The reason why she used this is this concept of recalibrating your perspective.

8:28Our brains are constantly inundated with the negative, with messages that tell our brain our behavior doesn't matter. It's very common these days, obviously, as we're seeing with levels of burnout, anxiety, loneliness, and depression to feel just overwhelmed by everything going on. And so this was her move to sort of take back control of her happiness and to remind her brain the ways in which her behavior mattered. So it didn't tell her everything in the ICU is going to be wonderful. Instead, what it did is it sent her back to the floor feeling stronger and more calibrated. So her perspective was more balanced.

9:03And that's what you mean by optimism is not a feeling it's a behavior. It's doing what she did. Yeah, so I think that is literally the most freeing part of this research, which is that you do not need to feel optimistic to behave optimistically. You can engage in the simple practices. These are things that I've seen now in my 15 years working with executives that have worked to help cultivate a stronger, positive, and optimistic mindset for themselves and also for their team members. and those practices help remind your brain of progress and possibility. And that can then create an upward spiral of how you look at the world in a way that hopefully helps that feeling of optimism catch up.

9:50But you don't need that as a core ingredient to get started. But then how do you, using your nurse example, how do you put aside the fact that the patient died? I mean, you can read all the things in the letters and all the nice things other people have said about how wonderful you are, but you've still got this smack in the face that the patient died. How do you deal with that? Yeah, so resilient optimism starts from a rational outlook. So my husband, who is also a happiness researcher or a positive psychology researcher, he came home from a talk one time. He says, this is the craziest version of optimism that I've ever run into or what people perceive as optimism.

10:33So he gave a talk at a company and the CEO afterwards came up and said, I love the research. I want to figure out how to more deeply embed it in my organization. And the entire presentation was about optimism, how it drives performance, and how it can be a game changer in organizations. So he offered Sean a ride to the airport. Sean gets in the guy's car, puts on his seatbelt. The CEO gets in, doesn't put on his seatbelt. And after a while, there's a seatbelt bell going off. So my husband, Sean, is very, very funny. If you've seen his TED Talk and laughed for the entire time, that's him. He's exceptionally funny.

11:03He turns to the CEO. He thinks he's making a joke. And he says, oh, so you don't wear seatbelts? And the guy's like, no, man, I saw your talk. I'm an optimist. Sean's like, no, you're something else, right? So optimism doesn't stop cars from hitting us or reality from impinging upon us. What we talk about here in the research is rational optimism, taking a realistic assessment in the present moment while maintaining a belief that our behavior matters, especially in the face of challenges. So for taking the nurse, for example, there will be hard days. Irrational optimism would say, everything's going to be fine.

11:36Our patients are going to be all cured and everything's going to be good. That's irrational, and that's what makes you make terrible decisions in the future if you have no grip on reality in the present. Meanwhile, rational optimism says, hey, yes, this is challenging. And I believe that what I do next matters. Our brain has an incredible power of being able to see, it has a negativity bias. We're able to see all the problems and challenges in our life. We sometimes, in the midst of the busyness of life and the burnout we might be feeling, we lose track of the progress that we're making and those ways in which our behavior matters.

12:12So what she was consciously doing that moment is reminding her brain of the other side of the story. That gives her a fuller picture, which strengthens her, and then hopefully helps her do a better job. So not ignoring reality at all. But there are other things that can affect the way you look at the world, your optimism or pessimism. Things like the weather or the news. There's other influences coming at us. I did a series of studies with Arianna Huffington looking at the impact of negative news on the brain. In the first study, we just exposed people to three minutes of negative news, and then the control group was three minutes of neutral news.

12:49And then we tested them on a whole host of performance and mood metrics. And what we found is what you would expect, which is that when people were exposed to just three minutes of negative news, they experienced a drop in some of those metrics. What made the study amazing is that we actually tested them six to eight hours later, six to eight hours after exposure. So as they're closing their laptop at the end of the day or they're picking up their kids from school, those that have been exposed to just three minutes of negative news had a 27 % increased likelihood of reporting their day as negative.

13:22And that's dramatic. But here's the hopeful part. We then ran a follow-up study. We found that when you don't just expose people to problems but you go on to append a solution or a set of solutions that they could themselves engage in to help solve that problem, just get them thinking about it. We found that those people exhibited 20 % better creative problem-solving skills later on. So just getting people to think about the solutions makes them smarter and better. And as leaders at organizations, as a parent who's guiding their kid through some challenges they're going through in school, just having those conversations around what they can do about it transforms the brain and fuels their performance.

14:01There is something I've noticed very alluring or contagious about pessimism. You know how a group of people in a room, one person can just suck the air out of the room. It's a lot harder for an optimist to bring everybody up. They can do it, but it's easier to bring everybody down. Yes, for years I was asked, who's more powerful? Is it the positive person or is it the negative person when it comes to creating culture around them? And so I scour the research, two decades of it. And what I found, it's actually, it's not the most positive person, but it's not the most negative person either. It's the person who's most expressive of their mindset.

14:45So I think that's really helpful for optimists or people who are trying to cultivate a more rationally optimistic mindset, is that you actually have tremendous power to influence the people around you. It's constantly happening all the time. we just sometimes forget our power. There was a phenomenal study done at the University of California, Riverside. And there they took groups of strangers, so sets of three people who didn't know each other, put them in a room for two minutes to sit together in silence. And they tested their mood and mindset before and after those two minutes. And what they found over and over with the groups of people was that the person in the room who was the most non-verbally expressive of their mood and mindset actually significantly influenced the mood and mindset of the other two people.

15:33And what I mean by that is the person who, if they were sitting there and they had a scowl on their face or they looked otherwise negative, they actually made the other two people feel more negative. Meanwhile, if they were relaxed or smiling, they actually made the other two people feel more positive. So that is in two minutes in silence. We've seen study after study that shows that an individual has the ability to change the ecosystem around them. The thing is, though, oftentimes we are so tuned in to that negative person who's influencing us that we're not seeing the ways in which we are positively influencing other people.

16:10I want to find out more about how the most expressive person is the one who influences the room. And we'll do that when we come back. A big thank you to today's sponsor, vinted. I think most of us have what I call someday clothes. I'll wear that someday. That'll fit better someday. Someday I'll have a place to wear that. Meanwhile, it's been hanging in the closet for three years. Vinted offers another possibility. Sell it. Every day people can sell clothes they're no longer wearing and make some extra money. And they've made the process pretty painless. Take what you don't wear, list it on Vinted.

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17:36With Gatorade electrolytes, zero sugar, and vitamins, Propel hydrates better than water to help you get the most out of your workout and get back to your best self. What propels you? Propel with Gatorade Electrolytes. We're talking about optimism or resilient optimism to be precise. My guest is Michelle Geelan. She's a positive psychology researcher and speaker, former anchor of the CBS Morning News and author of the book Resilient Optimism. So Michelle, I like what you said that It's not necessarily, because I've always thought it was, that it's the negative person that can just suck the air out of the room, but that it's the most expressive person, optimistic or pessimistic.

18:21And that seems right, because I do know people who are optimistic and who have that energy that can really rally people together, and they're very expressive. We did a study with Training Magazine. We found that 31 % of people are actually optimistic. They're not expressive of their mindset. And what I think is so powerful about that, that means one in three people sitting around you, they just need a license from you to speak up. Like, hey, make it part of the culture. We say good things around here. We talk about the good more than we complain or whatever. And so by modeling it, I think you encourage other people to match in kind.

19:04Oh, and I do have to say one other thing because I think this is so fascinating. So I did a deeper dive on this research data set that we have. I've been collecting now over the last 11 years responses for more than 25 ,000 business professionals looking at their optimism and a host of other things and their positive expressivity. And I found something so telling. Eight in 10 people still call themselves optimists. That stayed steady over time. But they are significantly less likely to behave like optimists. Specifically, if someone presents a new idea, they're less likely to say something positive.

19:36If they start a conversation, they're less likely to start with something positive. If they're thinking optimistic thoughts these days, they're less likely to say it to anybody else. If we don't behave like optimists, we're not sending out those signals to other people. We're not giving them evidence of progress and possibility. And ultimately, we're dampening everybody's performance. Ain't that the truth? And everybody can relate to what you're saying. But maybe there are times where you just need to bitch and complain. you know like you're just fed up and you just need to get it off your chest is there any evidence that that's a good thing to do are you better off shutting up and and going doing something else oh anecdotally i can tell you that's a good thing to do you should absolutely be in touch with your emotions um and i mean hopefully you do it in a socially appropriate way in a way that's helpful to the people around you and not just bringing everyone down the quiet that we're human beings And so it is very natural to ebb and flow through a range of emotions.

20:36And we don't want to just stuff those inside because then all of a sudden we're eating a cupcake at two in the morning. You know, it shows up in other ways. What I think, where I think this research gets really powerful is, and where I use it in my life, is I go through the full range of emotions, but I can get back to a place of peace and capability and optimism more quickly because I employ these behaviors. So yes, go out, grab a beer with your friend and complain to your heart's content. But understand that if you bring that into the office on a regular basis, you're being toxic and it's gonna have a negative effect on other people.

21:18If you're complaining at Thanksgiving dinner, guess what? No one's going to want to have Thanksgiving dinner with you anymore. So we have to be realistic about the influence we have on other people. At the same time, we don't want to deny the human experience and not be real about what we're feeling. I often wonder if the people who very reliably start complaining and moaning and groaning bring the room down. if they know what they're doing, if they understand the effect they're having on other people? Not all the time. I mean, sometimes they know they're happy to be the contrarian and all the things.

21:57But a lot of times, they don't know. They don't realize that A, it's become a habit, B, it's negatively affecting everyone else. And so it takes reminders. And sometimes it takes something as bold as someone saying, this is the effect you're having on people. So I worked with this one manager at one point during a consulting engagement. And he said to me, I am totally lost. I don't know what to do here because I have one team member and we're a small team and she just comes to meetings and destroys the mood. And it's having an effect on like when we're having brainstorming sessions, we just can't get off the ground because she's just out of the gate She's already complaining about stuff.

22:44And yet, she's a nice, good person, right? So we talked through what he could do with her, and he tried to lead her through some positive questions, wasn't working. And finally, I said to her, how much social capital do you have with her? How comfortable do you feel sitting her down, probably on a Friday afternoon, and saying, we all care about you. I have been thinking about your effect on this office and I want to offer you an idea or a thought. And he just put it out there. And then he gave her the weekend to think through it. And she came in on Monday and it was a little awkward at first, of course, but she finally, by around lunchtime, came to him and said, I heard what she said.

23:25I heard what she said. And I thought about it all weekend. I'm going to try to show up differently. And to her credit, she did make a big move. So she wasn't being fake because authenticity is so important with all this, but she had that separation between thinking something and just letting it come out of her mouth. And she started to employ a filter that helped her change not only what she was emoting to everybody else, but also how she saw her experience at work. She's like, actually, there's a lot of nice people here. And actually, we are making progress and stuff. And actually, these ideas people are presenting are not all terrible.

24:00And her perception started to change, But it took social capital from her boss and an open heart from her. But do you think some people are just naturally optimistic that they don't have to do the work? It just, they came pre-wired. There is a predisposition, sort of a genetic predisposition towards optimism. We have seen it in the research, but that is just a small part of the story. And I think that if we fall back to say, oh, well, I was born a pessimist, I'll always be a pessimist, you are shortchanging yourself the opportunity to change and to benefit. There was a study done with grumpy older gentlemen pessimists.

24:44These are guys that had been practicing pessimism for seven and eight decades of their life. Researchers asked them, just catalog three good things from the day and keep up that practice daily. After two weeks, the gentleman who had tested as moderate-level pessimists began testing as moderate-level optimists. Those that kept up the practice for six months actually began testing as even higher optimists from there. So it shows us that we can change our brain at any time. And when we do so, we see that optimism doesn't just drive our well-being. It drives our performance as well, greater productivity, energy.

25:22We live longer. You're more likely to survive a cancer diagnosis. It's literally across the board. So in my opinion, it is the best investment you can make, whether you're already genetically predisposed to higher levels of optimism or you are that grumpy old pessimist who has been doing it for a long time. It doesn't matter where your starting place is. There is so much room for growth no matter what. Well, you have a unique take on optimism that's different than I think most people think of when they think of optimism, which is, you know, look on the bright side, you know, the glass is half full.

25:59Yours is much more based in action and behavior. I've been talking with Michelle Geelan. She's a positive psychology researcher and speaker, former anchor of the CBS Morning News. And the name of her book is Resilient Optimism. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for being here, Michelle. Thanks, Mike, for having me. I've really had a fun time with you. Thank you. Propel Fitness Water with Gatorade electrolytes, zero sugar, and vitamins. Propel hydrates better than water to help you get the most out of your workout and get back to your best self. What propels you? Propel with Gatorade electrolytes.

26:39If you want to understand how the food business works, take a good look at a box of breakfast cereal. It's food, of course, but it's also a carefully designed marketing machine. There are cartoons for kids, promises of vitamins and whole grains for parents, and often a surprising amount of sugar inside. And somehow it all gets packaged together as breakfast. So how healthy or unhealthy is cereal? Is a bowl of sugary cereal better than no breakfast at all? And what can cereal teach us about how food companies influence what we eat and even what we think is good for us? Marion Nestle is a professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at NYU, and one of the country's leading experts on food politics.

27:32She is author of several books, and her latest is Sugar Coated, Unboxing the Hidden Forces Shaping America's Favorite Breakfast Food. Hey, Marion, welcome to Something You Should Know. Oh, glad to be here. Do we know where breakfast cereal came from? Does it have a very specific origin? I have a sense it does. Oh, it absolutely does. And it's an amazing one. in the late 1800s, just before 1900, John Harvey Kellogg had the idea that he wasn't actually the first. There were other people who had done high fiber cereals before then, but he was the first one who really was able to put it together into a form that was edible.

28:21Whole wheat is very, very hard to digest. You have to kind of pound it and shape it and cook it a little bit before people can eat it. And John Harvey Kellogg was very influenced by the Seventh-day Adventists and believed that if you ate a high-fiber cereal, it would solve all of your health problems. Health problems were considered to be digestive in those days. Everything followed from digestion. And so a high fiber cereal would prevent dyspepsia, which is what they called it. And that would prevent a whole bunch of other things. And so he invented the cereal and then his brother invented cornflakes.

29:06And they had lots and lots of personal problems between the two of them about owning the property and selling the foods. John Harvey Kellogg was a health guru, and his brother W.K. was much more interested in selling cereals to the masses, and he wanted to put sugar in it, lots of sugar, but his brother wouldn't let him. And the sugary cereals didn't really start until John Harvey Kellogg died. The word cereal today, when you say that word, it means for most people breakfast cereal. But it didn't mean it then until when it was just getting started. So what did the word cereal mean? Well, it meant grains, basically.

29:54It was a synonym for grains and all grains. It included corn and still does. It included rye and sorghum and all of those things. But the breakfast cereals are mainly oats, corn, and wheat. And part of what the marketing of breakfast cereals was about was, first of all, to convince Americans that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and that breakfast meant cold, ready -to-eat cereals. And they did a great job of that. What did people eat before breakfast cereal? If it wasn't bacon and eggs or waffles, what was it? Well, they ate whatever they could get their hands on. I mean, food was always scarce, and you ate leftovers from dinner the night before.

30:46You ate what you could. Oh, I mean, if you had money, you had bacon and eggs and pancakes and things like that. But, you know, you ate whatever. You go all over the world. Lots of people don't eat breakfast on what we consider to be breakfast cereals. And the first breakfast cereal that was put in a box and a name was put on the box, what was it? I think it was something called granula. And that was before the Kellogg cereals came out. But the mass marketed ones were the Kellogg cereals of one kind or another. the ones that were really wildly popular and sold all over the place. And what were those?

31:33Well, Corn Flakes was one of the first. All brand dates in 1919. I mean, by the early 1900s, there were something like 70 cereal companies in Battle Creek, Michigan. The smaller ones died out, and they were left with Kellogg's and Post. But the, you know, I mean, and then General Mills came in, but that was not necessarily in Battle Creek. And was it popular right away, the idea of breakfast cereal? Well, it was popular among the wellness crowd. You know, John Harvey Kellogg ran a sanatorium in Battle Creek that was a sort of famous place where people who had dyspepsia went to get their dyspepsia cured.

32:26And it was kind of an amazing place. I mean, I think Kellogg was way ahead of his time in promoting fiber. He was an early fiber maxer. but the you know there's a terrific movie called The Road to Wellville which seems highly exaggerated but is amazingly close to what that sanatorium was actually pretty much like and very good books have been written about this the it's just fascinating to read about. These were health gurus in 1900, in the early 1900s very much, and a lot of what they were talking about sounds very much like the wellness entrepreneurs now. The idea of cereal being for the wellness crowd, being healthy, and I guess there are certain cereals that when I hear their names, I think, yeah, those are the healthy cereals, some granola and grape nuts and those kind of things.

33:29But for the most part, they seem like kid food to me. Oh, they are. And that couldn't happen until John Harvey Kellogg died. When he died, it then became possible to dump sugar into cereals, to color them up, to market them directly to children and to do all of those things that, you know, we raise our eyebrows about now. You know, I've got a consecutive series of color copies of Froot Loops boxes dating back to 1963. And in 1963, Kellogg introduced Froot Loops. It was brightly colored with neon colors with the petroleum dyes that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is trying so hard to get rid of now and succeeding to a considerable extent.

34:25and loaded with sugar. And a tablespoon of sugar per ounce, that's half the calories and half the weight. Wow, a tablespoonful of sugar per ounce in Froot Loops. Yeah, I mean, that's how it started. And that's most, you know, the cereal companies have, under pressure, cereal companies have tried as hard as they can to get the sugar down. And the limit seems to be about 12 grams per ounce. So the 12 grams per ounce is, okay, that's not quite 50%. It's 40 % of the calories. And kids love that. Well, of course. Who wouldn't love that? Who does not? Well, I find them too sweet, and they have off flavors to me from all the stuff they add to them.

35:18It was in the late 50s, early 60s that cereals were aimed specifically at children. You know, your kids will have a nutritious breakfast because we've added all these vitamins. And yeah, we threw in a little sugar because otherwise they wouldn't eat it. Well, what about those claims that they've added vitamins and things? Is that not a good thing or is that just a marketing thing? Oh, I think it's marketing. I mean, Americans are not vitamin deprived. They're really not. I mean, the big problem in American diets is that people eat too much. And if you're eating enough calories, you're probably getting enough vitamins, unless you're not eating any vegetables at all.

36:00So I don't see these vitamins as being a problem. But the vitamins in some of the cereals are essentially vitamin-supplemented cookies, is what they are. What about the cereals that you don't necessarily consider sugary kid cereals, like Corn Flakes? Corn Flakes to me is not, but there is sugar in it, right? Oh, very little. You know, very, very little as compared to the kid cereal. I think there's four grams per ounce or something like that. I would consider that minimal sugar. And then Frosted Flakes, which is the same thing, only with lots of sugar, I guess. Well, that'll be in the 11 and 12 grams per ounce category.

36:50And that's the industry standard for sweetened cereals. You know, I like post-shredded wheat, the mini ones, and it doesn't have any sugar in it at all. It's a one-ingredient cereal, wheat, and I add my own sugar. I think a little sugar helps, but I'm not adding 12 grams. You know, it's interesting to me, and the same is true with soda, is when they say that there's all this sugar in it, why does it have to, because as you say, when you have a bowl of shredded wheat and you sprinkle a teaspoon of sugar on it, it seems like plenty. So why isn't it plenty when they put sugar in it when they make it?

37:33Well, I think they're covering up the off tastes that must come from the other additives that are in there. Or actually, it's the vitamins. Vitamins don't taste good.

37:49Supplemental vitamins, they really don't. So they have to cover up the vitamin and mineral taste. And the sugar does that. But, you know, the shredded wheat doesn't have vitamins in it, so they don't have to cover up anything. As you say, the marketing to kids started in the 60s, I think. And so what happened between the late 1800s and the 60s? Was cereal just kind of humming along and some people bought it and some people didn't? I mean, yeah, they bought it. I mean, I have facsimiles of All Brand going back to 1919. And in 1919, it was already being advertised as something that would help your digestion and prevent dyspepsia and that sort of thing.

38:40And that was, you know, that had a little bit of sugar in it, but very, very little. And All Brand still has only a little. It really hasn't. I mean, that's a recipe that hasn't changed. Cornflakes recipe hasn't changed in all of these years. And the original Cheerios recipe hasn't really changed, except that Cheerios has expanded into 20 different versions, many of which are loaded with sugar. But the original has sugar, but it's not tons of sugar. It's just not much. It's just not much. And Cheerios was and is still a very popular brand with people, So it is possible to make a cereal without a lot of sugar, like Corn Flakes and Cheerios, that people seem to like.

39:24Yeah, or Wheaties. Wheaties, yeah. Those are the old ones, and people do like them, and sometimes they add sugar. I like fruit with mine. And they still work. But the big sellers, the big sellers are the sugary cereals, the really big sellers. And that started in the 60s, probably not unrelated to the fact that that's when television was really taking off. Sure, because they could advertise. There's a whole book about advertising serials on television. Somebody wrote a book about it. And the cereal box itself was a big marketing tool, I suspect. Oh, right from the beginning. They're big. We call them billboards.

40:13because every single thing that is on that box is either there because it has to be there by FDA regulation or it's got to have a QR code for retailers. The rest of it is all marketing, and it's an enormous amount of marketing space. So every single thing that's on the front of the package is designed to attract people to buy it, and the back of the package has all the stuff you can read while you're eating your cereal in the morning. Games for kids. I sense from listening to you talk that you're not a big fan of the sugary cereals, but what's the big deal if you have them once in a while? Oh, once in a while, it's not a big deal at all.

40:59That's true of any food. But the question that comes up instantly is, when did it become okay to feed kids vitamin-supplemented cookies for breakfast? I mean, you wouldn't think, or most people would not think about giving their kids cookies for breakfast. You know, you want your child to have something nutritious with a little protein in it and, you know, something that's going to get them through the next few hours when they're in school. You certainly wouldn't feed them dessert. And these are essentially desserts. I don't think in the 60s and 70s people thought a whole lot about this. The theory was, or the thinking was, the kids should have breakfast and cereal's easy.

41:49And so that's a good breakfast. Oh, and don't forget the milk. Yeah, and the milk. This was a cereal was an excuse to get kids to drink their milk because the word was out that dairy products were essential and that kids needed three glasses of milk a day, preferably adults, too. And so this was a way to get kids to get milk and get all the vitamins and minerals that are in milk and then have the cereal, too. And they would be getting some things that they need. But most of the kids' cereals are very low in fiber. You know, and one of the reasons for eating cereal is fiber. And by 1970, there were already congressional hearings complaining about the amount of how non-nutritious breakfast cereals were, how they were being marketed to kids, and how they had way, way, way, way too much sugar in them.

42:54And that was 1970, congressional hearings. Are cereals as popular today as ever, or have people kind of gotten the message and maybe backed off, or what? Well, it turns out that cereal sales are way down, and it's an enormous problem for the industry. And they're way down for the same reasons that all other foods are down. You know, the food industry is undergoing a period of decreasing sales because Robert F. Kennedy Jr. thinks that they're poisoning America. People are concerned, I think, rightfully about ultra-processed foods and want to cut back on ultra-processed foods. Inflation has made the cost of cereal amazing.

43:45It's just doubled in the last few years. And then there are GLP-1 drugs. And people who are on GLP-1 drugs are eating less, which is very bad for business. And they're also cutting down on things that have a lot of sugar in them. And then on top of that, everybody's lifestyle makes getting a bowl down, putting cereal in it, adding milk, eating it with a spoon, and then having a bowl to wash afterwards just seems like a lot of trouble to a lot of people who much prefer Pop-Tarts or something else that they can just grab and go. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's always been the thing is, is it better to not eat any breakfast or is it better to eat a sugary breakfast?

44:42Oh, well, always it's a question of what you're comparing it to and what else you're eating. If the only sugary food you had during the day was your cereal for breakfast, nobody would be the slightest bit concerned about it. But if everything you're eating during the day is loaded with sugar and is not a vegetable, then you're going to be concerned about the overall balance in the diet. The secret of good nutrition is eating a balanced diet, and that means foods from every possible group and grape variety in not very large portions. My understanding is that it was one of the Kellogg brothers or somebody in the cereal business marketing people that came up with this idea that breakfast is the most important meal of the day?

45:34Oh, yeah, they did a lot of research on that. And it's interesting, because I'm not a breakfast eater. And I've, you know, at various times in my career, I've given lectures, and people have asked what I had for breakfast. And I say, well, I don't really eat breakfast. I don't get hungry till about 11 o 'clock in the morning. And people are just shocked, absolutely shocked, a nutritionist who doesn't eat breakfast. But I've had people come up to me with tears in their eyes saying, thank you. I never want to eat first thing in the morning, and I've always just forced myself, and now I won't anymore.

46:12I thought, well, I've done some good. So what's your message here to wrap things up? What do you want people to understand about this business? The cereal business is like any other food business, and its purpose is to sell cereals. So in a sense, using cereals as an example, you generalize from that to every other food product. It's just that I picked cereals with my co-author because the boxes are so amazing and so much is known about them and the marketing is so obvious. The way the companies use nutrients, the way they use health claims, the way they use the political system, the way they market to special population groups are all examples, you know, just beautifully illustrated examples of how food marketing works.

47:14Regardless of the health quality of the product. Cereal is not the worst health product, you know, the worst food product by any means. but it's sure a good example of how you turn some sugary product into something that everybody thinks they must have and eat for breakfast, for heaven's sakes. I imagine there are very few people listening to us right now who don't have at least one box of cereal in their kitchen somewhere, so it's really interesting to hear the story of breakfast cereal and what's really in them. I've been talking to Marion Nestle. She is a professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at NYU, and one of the country's leading experts on food politics.

47:56The name of her book is Sugar Coated, Unboxing the Hidden Forces, Shaping America's Favorite Breakfast Food. There's a link to her book in the show notes. And, Marian, always a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you very much. Happy to be here.

48:14If you're going to take a walk sometime during the day, right after eating may be one of the best times to do it. Research has found that walking for as little as 2-5 minutes after a meal can help keep your blood sugar from spiking as high as it would if you simply stayed seated. The reason is surprisingly simple. When your muscles start working, they use some of the glucose that's entering your bloodstream from your meal. You don't have to walk fast or work up a sweat or even go very far. Even a leisurely trip around the block can make a measurable difference. And newer research suggests a post-meal walk may also help food move through your stomach more efficiently, reducing that overly full feeling some people get after eating.

49:01So instead of immediately settling in on the couch after dinner, taking even a short stroll may be one of the easiest and healthy habits you can adopt. And that is something you should know. And if you're taking that walk with somebody else, you might tell them about this podcast so they can listen and we get a new listener. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.