{"id":2366,"date":"2009-07-26T00:02:23","date_gmt":"2009-07-25T22:02:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.ultimatefatburner.com\/?p=2366"},"modified":"2015-02-16T09:02:28","modified_gmt":"2015-02-16T14:02:28","slug":"real-men-eat-crap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/real-men-eat-crap\/","title":{"rendered":"Real Men Eat Crap"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introducing the new “Wheaties Fuel”…<\/a><\/p>\n

Testosterone swirls around every aspect of Wheaties Fuel\u2019s introduction. General Mills \u2014 maker of the most popular brand, Cheerios, and the second-largest cereal manufacturer, behind Kellogg\u2019s \u2014 used a panel of only male athletes, including the Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning and the Boston Celtics power forward Kevin Garnett, to consult on both the nutritional profile and flavor.<\/p>\n

From that, the company produced three prototypes of Wheaties Fuel. Samples are going out to about 1,000 \u201ceveryday athletes,\u201d primarily Men\u2019s Health readers who volunteered online. By popular vote, those readers will choose the winner, which will be announced Sept. 9; for a few months, the cereal will be available only online, and will be in supermarkets in January.<\/p>\n

…The three prototypes bear little resemblance to the original Wheaties, a basic wheat flake: all are much sweeter than the original (each are 25 percent sugars by weight, compared to original Wheaties, at 15 percent). Two contain clusters that have a cinnamon-roll-like flavor and a third has raisins, cranberries and almonds. A cup, without milk, contains 210 calories, compared to 133 in the original Wheaties.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is a great development, because\u00a0we all know men\u00a0require even\u00a0more sugar and calories in their diets, right?<\/p>\n

I’m being sarcastic, of course.\u00a0 It’s not as if there’s\u00a0actually a need for such a product, even among men who really are athletes, and burn cals by the truckload.\u00a0 It’s all about trying to boost\u00a0brand sales via niche marketing.<\/p>\n

Earlier brand extensions of Wheaties have not bowled over consumers, with the company ceasing production of both Honey Frosted Wheaties and Wheaties Raisin Bran in 2002, after a seven-year run, and of Wheaties Energy Crunch in 2004, after just three years.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Naturally, the Marketing Boyz are\u00a0playing it with a completely straight face… just because there’s no real need for the product doesn’t mean you can’t create<\/strong> one.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody in this enormous category is speaking to men,\u201d said David Clark, a marketing manager at General Mills. \u201cMen don\u2019t use their wives\u2019 razors or deodorants; why would they be eating their cereal?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As my bud, Will Brink responded:<\/p>\n

“Their<\/em> cereal? It’s got extra estrogen added to it? This is a perfect example of the saying “no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” Sad but true statement that…”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m with Will… outside of lame “diet”\u00a0products like Special K, I’ve\u00a0always seen packaged breakfast cereal as a unisex\u00a0sort of product.\u00a0 Men and women are both people, after all, and people need to eat.\u00a0Food is food…End of story.<\/p>\n

Assuming you even think of packaged cereal as “food”, that is… I don’t, and haven’t for a long time. The high heat treatment and extrusion processes used to produce cereal flakes\u00a0are rather damaging to the macronutrients and result in the formation of potentially harmful advanced glycation end products (AGEs).\u00a0 As one research study described it<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Indeed, several food processing techniques promote glycoxidation.\u00a0 Processing of some ready-to-eat cereals, which includes heating at temperatures over 230o<\/sup>C, may explain the high AGE content of these products.\u00a0 Also, many cereals and snack-type foods undergo an extrusion process under high pressure to produce pellets of various shapes and densities.\u00a0 This treatment causes major chemical changes, thermal degradation, dehydration, depolarization and recombination of fragments, all of which can promote glycoxidation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As far as I’m concerned, ready-to-eat\u00a0cereals are damaged goods, that serve mostly as sources of calories and sprayed on vites\/minerals.\u00a0 Adding more sugar is simply adding insult to injury.<\/p>\n

But that’s par for the course, when it comes to food products aimed at the “bro” market.\u00a0 Seems to me that every time I look at\u00a0food products marketed to\u00a0“Real Men” – it’s something that’s not particularly healthy.\u00a0 For example:<\/p>\n

[youtube:http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=hSLp5yt2C8Q]<\/p>\n

and…<\/p>\n

[youtube:http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=dLIIKrJ6nnI]<\/p>\n

Since men are, on average, larger than women,\u00a0 they can also\u00a0consume more calories\/day.\u00a0 But this isn’t a “get out of jail free” card – the difference isn’t so profound, that men can afford to double up on higher fat\/sugar\/sodium\u00a0food products without paying a price for it.\u00a0 We’re smack in the middle of an obesity epidemic, for chrissakes, so EVERYONE needs to be more mindful of what they eat: men as well as women.<\/p>\n

I’m not against gender-specific marketing, per se… but I have to admit, I’m a little weary of the\u00a0“Real Men Eat Crap” angle that’s employed\u00a0for marketing food products to men.\u00a0 It’s not effeminate to want to be lean and healthy,\u00a0or to\u00a0consume foods that will help get you there.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Introducing the new “Wheaties Fuel”… Testosterone swirls around every aspect of Wheaties Fuel\u2019s introduction. General Mills \u2014 maker of the most popular brand, Cheerios, and the second-largest cereal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13,14,24,28],"tags":[74,89,264,1069,1091,1863,1369,1781],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2366"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2366"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9663,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2366\/revisions\/9663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}