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00:00this is Ella Mills who in 2017 took on the breakfast cereal giants and is predicted to
00:10make a revenue of 20 million pounds in 2022 I mean they're delicious absolutely delicious
00:20but they are so sweet they feel like pudding versus maybe like 7am preschool breakfast
00:28sugar is the second ingredient and they don't really have any fiber and they don't really have
00:32any protein dating is probably what we should all be having for breakfast every day the battle
00:38of Britain's breakfast cereal has been fought for decades between two main players American
00:45giant Kellogg's for most people Kellogg's was the name for cereals seven out of ten households in
00:52the UK I've got a Kellogg product in the cupboard and from Northamptonshire Weetabix you know we
00:59delighted in knocking the points off their sales in order to increase ours everybody wants to work
01:05on the best the leading cereal brand in the UK in the fight for sales nothing is off limits the sugar
01:13was a way of getting the kid to eat grain-based cereal and milk and frankly if you didn't put
01:19the sugar on they wouldn't eat it and as our tastes have changed the battle to be number one has become
01:25fiercer than ever the big boys are being challenged you're gonna have to fight these guys on the
01:30beaches you mustn't give them an inch it was the biggest threat I think that the company never faced
01:35no question about it this is the story of the fight for Britain's breakfast table you'll never untouch
01:49Rob Morgan is a titan of the food industry for nearly a decade at Kellogg's he made sure we'd had
02:00our cornflakes very nice Kellogg's cornflakes I spent every Thursday afternoon when I was at
02:07Kellogg's going to taste tests when we would test the product straight off the line they are kernels of
02:14corn that had just been flattened and steamed and cooked and toasted and then a little bit of sugar
02:19and salt added but not a lot has changed it's the the mother of all cereals the one that started it all
02:25but it was a fight between two brothers that gave us the cornflake in 1894 John Harvey and William Keith
02:33Kellogg invented a healthy breakfast for patients convalescing in their sanatorium in Battle Creek Michigan
02:40it was made from good grains and it was seen as a good thing for people who are recovering from
02:45illness but despite his popularity and health benefits the brothers disagreed over making a
02:51profit out of their creation one of the brothers decided that there was a commercial opportunity and
02:58he wanted to develop the product and actually sell it to people outside the sanatorium his brother
03:04John Harvey didn't and resisted this and saw it purely as something that was an altruistic move by
03:09one of them that was purely for their own patients with brotherly love in short supply
03:14William Keith left the patients behind and decided to set up shop WK Kellogg went on to establish
03:21Kellogg's and the rest is history after modifying his flakes with malt salt and a spoonful of sugar to
03:28sweeten them they became a cheap nutritious and easy breakfast for the American masses but when they first
03:35came to Britain us Brits didn't love them British consumers were a little bit suspicious at first of
03:41this new American invention so the shift from the classic British breakfast of bacon and eggs to cereals
03:48didn't happen overnight but Kellogg's from Michigan won us over and in 1938 opened Europe's largest cereal
03:56factory in Manchester from then on they pushed their healthy credentials and tried to persuade us they
04:02were good for us only the original carries the Kellogg's name and there are none crisper none fresher none better
04:13Kellogg's Corn Flakes the only ones fortified with vitamins Kellogg's Corn Flakes had well and truly pushed our
04:21traditional fried grub aside when you've got something that's simple but difficult to make and
04:27difficult to replicate it's a great magical formula to have but recognizing the potential of a healthy
04:33breakfast cereal two wheat millers from Northamptonshire made the deal of a lifetime it still crumbles a bit
04:40out the packet doesn't it as it normally is and it's a great biscuit and it's fantastic product and you
04:46wouldn't want anything better than that for breakfast or any other time of the day for that matter
04:51so I'm Martin George my grandfather and father bought Wheat Bix in 1936 invented by the Australians
05:01Wheat Bix was a healthy breakfast biscuit the George family cleaned the wheat for one of Wheat Bix's
05:07factories but the company had fallen on hard times unfortunately they failed to pay for it and so
05:14father swapped the shares for the Wheat and so that's how they came to own it the George family
05:20had acquired a secret the simplest of recipes that has gone head-to-head with Corn Flakes for decades
05:25its simplicity was its biggest strength so Wheat Bix has always been made in the same way mixed the
05:34various ingredients together the malt and the sugar and the wheat and the whole thing then goes extruded into
05:40these some molds that are made of the shape very difficult to reproduce it was an irritant for
05:48us it was a versatile cereal very solid very dependable it was very good for young infants as
05:54their their first food so there was a lot about the Wheat Bix biscuit that was actually very good so in a
06:00sense it filled the gap in the market that we weren't filling there was no love lost between the two
06:06cereal rivals Kellogg's were you know multinational American based company and we were a British
06:14company that was a good start and you know we did delighted in knocking the points off their sales in
06:22order to increase ours I imagine they began to think that this little biscuit was going to give them a
06:27trouble if it wasn't too careful by the 1950s Kellogg's had over 50 percent of the cereal market and their
06:34share was about to increase with the end of war rationing Kellogg's created a new cornflake based
06:40cereal with an added ingredient that hadn't been readily available for years they introduced a new
06:46fun-filled character to sell it to the nation's children super energy I need my Kellogg's sugar frosted
06:53flakes they're delicious sugar toasted full of super energy I think sugar is is is got a different
07:02perception perhaps today than it did you know the the desire for sugar the desire for nutrition was
07:08definitely something that was positive obesity was not an issue in fact very much the the reverse in
07:16those days people added sugar to their tea and coffee they sprinkled sugar on fruit they put sugar on
07:22desserts and they put sugar on their cereals now Kellogg's then responded to this by simply giving
07:27people the sugar on the flake that they would otherwise have added themselves
07:32Kellogg's new sugary flakes were a hit and their success encouraged them to come up with more sugary brands
07:38and cartoon characters including an infamous monkey
07:42cocoa pops after school at bedtime or for breakfast Kellogg's saw the opportunity of bringing in brands that were very
07:52specifically targeted to children and when I say targeted in terms of the packaging the use of characters
07:58on pack and the food itself which generally was sweeter and and more playful despite the profits being made
08:06by Kellogg's Weetabix refused to change their recipe and stuck to their tried and tested formula
08:13Weetabix was seen as a very nutritious cereal which you couldn't always say for sugar puffs and not
08:20different things of that sort i don't mean to be disparaging about that but it was seen as
08:25not very much better than that the thing we we said when I was there was that you had to get your
08:31kid to eat something in the morning for breakfast and what were the alternatives if you gave them
08:35toast you wouldn't give them a dry piece of toast you would put butter on it and jam well butter and
08:40jam are fat and sugar you put honey on which is high in sugar so the sugar was a way of getting the the
08:46kid to eat grain-based cereal and milk and in those days if you didn't put the sugar on they wouldn't eat it
08:54sales of frosties and cocoa pop soared leaving Weetabix languishing they now needed a game-changing
09:01new product of their own the only way as a company they could really grow was to bring in a wider range
09:07of products and that obviously comes with a huge danger of investment and cost so it was fraught with
09:14risk Kellogg's has always been a really big business Weetabix was a smaller business with less brands
09:21the innovation at Weetabix was a lot slower so when we put money behind something we knew it was going to work
09:33by the start of the 1970s Kellogg's were dominating the british breakfast cereal market
09:39with a raft of different products some healthy some not so one brave all british brand was fighting for
09:47its place at the table Kellogg's were the number one cereal brand and they were the ones that we
09:52wanted to beat yeah it was a healthy rivalry Weetabix needed to try and expand its range while staying
09:59true to its healthy beginnings in 1971 a Weetabix executive took a family skiing holiday in switzerland
10:09so the story is that somebody quite senior within the business was away on a skiing holiday and they
10:17were served this muesli for breakfast they thought this is really tasty i wonder if this would do well
10:25in the uk and decided to bring that recipe and alpine was developed within months the Weetabix boffins
10:35had turned an alpine holiday breakfast into a revolutionary cereal which enticed adults with
10:41its natural healthy clean living image from this land of summer richness comes a marvellous old swiss
10:48recipe full of good things wheat and oats full ripe grapes firm young hazelnuts alpen was um always
10:58positioned as a healthy product it was that whole idea of bringing that swiss air into the in into the
11:04breakfast time alpen is a very high good value product in terms of nutrition and people were more
11:13inclined to try the album on the basis that it was done by somebody who'd done a really good job with
11:19their main product
11:24yeah it's 21% sugar
11:28it does taste i think like it used to because that's really interesting it doesn't taste anything
11:32like what i think of as a muesli now it's crispy wheat flakes a milk powder
11:43that's quite sweet but the marketing worked alpen boosted Weetabix's market share by around a
11:49quarter in its first year and kellogg's were caught napping i think it was partly this kind of seen as
11:56something a little bit more exotic a little bit more trendy than having if i can say good old boring
12:02Weetabix or cornflakes seeing the ascent of alpen's sales kellogg's set to work developing their very
12:08own version in 1974 they launched a mix of oats maize wheat bran nuts and dried fruit they set
12:17themselves apart from alpen by emphasizing the quality of their homegrown ingredients
12:24kellogg's have gathered together a store of good country things to make a new breakfast food called
12:29country store perhaps the most delicious new breakfast you've tasted yet
12:34it was very much alpen country store you know and it was when we were in the stores it was trying
12:40to get as much space for for country store at the expense of alpen we owned the swissness that swiss
12:48style muesli theirs was more about mouthfeel more about sort of the crunch and that sort of the texture
12:55you don't you don't have to work hard to eat alpen but without the whiff of alpine air country store
13:00failed to appeal to the changing tastes of the new adult market you put your investment where you're
13:06going to get the best return and that wasn't necessarily with country store alpen were the
13:10clear winners in the big brand muesli market but without knowing they were inspiring a new generation of
13:18cereal entrepreneurs two young brothers from bedfordshire were about to enter the fray
13:24there was an awful lot of change happening in the late 60s not least in food bill jordan's family
13:31had been running a mill in biggleswade since 1855 but by the 1960s business was bad we were very aware
13:40of how threatened the industry was and how difficult it was to survive in the milling industry
13:46when everybody else was going down the pan bill and his brother david were heirs to the family business
13:53but in the summer of 69 decided to go on a journey of self-discovery i was playing in a french band and
14:00spent most of my time in the back of a van i hitched tight across the states from the east to the west bill
14:07not only found himself but a new counter-culture cereal that would change his and his family's life
14:14this was when i was fortunate to run into granola i was absolutely bowled over by it was a really
14:20interesting mix of cereals oats seeds nuts fruit in some cases it was nutritious and it was probably
14:30the sort of thing that could be made in an old mill in bedfordshire returning home to biggleswade bill
14:36and his brother mixed variations of oats nuts and seeds and baked them in the agar
14:42testing them out on their mum patricia around the kitchen table
14:47early ovens were a bit of a shambles weren't they everyone used to keep burning ourselves with
14:51those trays yeah yeah if you had three stripes three burns on your arm you're a sergeant
14:57you've got to run the shift it wasn't fun there was all the fun things we had with the cereals trying
15:02things everything was a bit of a muddle and a laugh and we enjoyed it all when we were trialing the
15:08the kitchen there were an awful lot of uh recipes that didn't seem to work they were too soggy too
15:14crunchy too brittle there was always something wrong we had a lot of things to talk about ingredients
15:21which hadn't really been recognized before we didn't have preservatives we didn't have flavorings
15:27we had whole grains and so we had a natural advantage in many ways having spent months
15:35perfecting the recipe the brothers quickly realized that breaking into the cereal market was going to
15:41be a challenge it was pretty difficult to get into the big supermarkets which were obviously
15:46full of the big manufacturer's product so in 1972 the jordan brothers launched their granola at the
15:54ideal home show but it didn't go quite as planned a lot of people accused us of selling the bird food
16:01which we were a bit concerned about with hundreds of bags of granola being produced every week they
16:07needed a new approach fast so began going to agricultural fairs and rock concerts to hand out
16:14samples of their new age product i think we sampled granola for the first three glastonbury festivals and
16:20carried on beyond that we had to get into the natural food stores health food stores delicatessen
16:28and we got a lot of support because we were different still containing sugar but packed full
16:33of healthy ingredients by the late 70s jordan's was selling its granola in 1500 health food stores
16:40which is when the supermarkets started to take note in the 1980s we were benefiting from the fact that a lot of
16:48the big manufacturers were being criticized for heavy use of sugar consumers were being told that
16:54the box was more nutritious than the contents and we were getting flack too on the granola side the new
17:02york times said what tastes terrible and doubles in sales every 30 days i think by 1980 we were selling
17:08something like 100 tons of granola a week by that time we got people like waitrose stocking us what
17:14were you trying to do with the cereal oh it was worldwide domination obviously while jordan's was
17:21cornering the adult market kellogg's continued to make big money selling cereal to kids and teenagers
17:27pin back your ears and listen up fellas i'm gonna tell you how to make your friends jealous you've
17:31got to find the key to the frosty's taste from the top secret formula on which it's thanks
17:36while tony the tiger had become cool arch rivals weetabix was still promoting a wholesome family image
17:48there was a real divide in cereals that were aimed at adults and cereals that were aimed at kids and it
17:53was very obvious so the ones that were aimed at adults were you know quite generally quite plain on
17:59the pack and were also relatively healthy the ones that were aimed at kids had uh usually some kind
18:08of character kids were finding the colorful advertising and catchy jingles of kellogg's brands
18:14irresistible as mums in supermarket aisles up and down the country were being pestered to purchase
18:33kellogg's sales in their biggest sugary brands rocketed pester power clearly came into selling
18:41kellogg's cereals i won't deny when you put a on pack promotion you put a very attractive um character
18:48on the pack so that you know that when the the family are going around the supermarket the kid is
18:53going to tug the mum's skirt and say i want that packet to take home today weetabix were struggling to
19:00compete and needed to update their image and in 1982 they came up with their very own characters
19:07to rough up their rivals we had better tell them we're not airy fairy cereals all right because we're
19:15a weetabix we're not nothing breakfast we've got a bit of bite we're a weetabix executives came up with
19:23dunk bixie brains crunch and brian the neat wheat gang the characters were great because each character
19:31was just highlighting actually a benefit of weetabix you've got bixie you've got brain you know you're
19:37going to be able to work hard at school it was good fun advertising but it was still advertising a
19:42product that to a lot of kids was seen as fairly dull and boring so i think our view of the the neat
19:47wheat gang was nice try but advertising in isolation isn't going to give you success with kids there was
19:53a comment was made that perhaps it was a bit too boisterous now and we needed to to move away from it
19:59in 1989 after seven years the neat wheat gang had gone stale and were withdrawn by wheat bix leaving
20:07kellogg's domination of the kids market undisputed and they were noticing that their sugary cereals
20:14weren't only loved by children frosted flakes just for kids come on like the adults have to go sneaking
20:21around like we can't enjoy these sweet crunchy flakes just as much as kids daddy are you eating our
20:27festive flakes again probably the greatest drivers of market growth in in the 1980s was the instruction
20:34of larger packs even though this was traditionally a kid cereal if you put a packet this big into
20:40people's homes mum and dad would eat it as well and eat it morning noon and particularly at night
20:45after a night at the pub
20:50but kellogg's didn't rest on their cornflakes knowing adults were eating kids cereal
20:55they tried to develop a sweet cereal aimed at adults just as they had done with the frosty in
21:01the 60s kellogg's took the cornflake and changed the game all right
21:10it's the honey it's the molasses freshly chopped nuts uh yeah just tastes sensational
21:17kellogg's launched the crunchy nut cornflake onto our breakfast tables the honey meant the flakes were 30
21:23sugar but their marketing campaign aimed squarely at adults encouraged us to eat as many bowls as
21:30possible kellogg's crunchy nut cornflakes delicious golden flakes of corn and crusted with honey nuts and
21:39brown sugar the trouble is they taste too good crunchy nut cornflakes became kellogg's second biggest
21:46selling cereal as humans we are drawn to salt sugar and fat if you want people to buy more and more
21:53of something then you know adding more sugar is going to be an absolute win and it dissolves into
21:57the milk and makes the milk sweet so it was i mean it was a surefire winner by 1995 kellogg's were unstoppable
22:04we couldn't get enough at that point pretty much all the innovation that we were churning out
22:10was working like a dream but kellogg's were about to come under attack not only for the amount of
22:16sugar in their cereal but by an invasion from across the atlantic competitors can come in in a different
22:24way in a different format than perhaps we'd seen before and you know you've got to be continually on the
22:31lookout and preparing for those options to happen it's 1990 kellogg's are in the top spot for the
22:43battle of britain's cereal and a long way clear of two of its major rivals wheatabix and jordans but
22:50they were about to be rocked by a seismic shift in the cereal industry two companies coming together with
22:57some of the world's leading brands the general mills company which was a very strong u.s cereal
23:02company joined forces with nestle and they came together to form what was called the cereal partners
23:07worldwide company the products were branded nestle between them these companies sold more than 25
23:13billion dollars worth of cereal worldwide many of their biggest sugary brands were unknown to us brits
23:20it was the biggest threat i think that the company had ever faced no question about it you know when
23:24you've got companies of that scale and size coming into the market this was pretty much unlike anything
23:30we we'd seen before so it was a real market disruptor seeing the u.s invasion on the horizon rob and the
23:36team at kellogg's readied themselves for the biggest threat to the company since it began in the u.s general
23:42mills and kellogg's fight each other kind of head to head it's almost like a pepsi coke battle
23:47and the battle sometimes can become quite emotional
23:50we heard stories of sometimes when either company increased market share they would actually
23:56hire billboards outside the other company's headquarters and advertise that market share
24:00gain to their enemies so when they came into the uk market a lot of the messages from our u.s
24:05colleagues was you're going to have to fight these guys on the beaches you mustn't give them an inch
24:10you know that they're going to you know they're going to be your next big threat rob knew there was
24:15little time to prepare if they lost their number one spot in the uk it could take decades to win it
24:21back at kellogg's we clearly had to come up with a strategy to to fight this new competitor part of
24:27the strategy was a tactical blocking of those brands that we anticipated would come in from the us
24:34they had two brands that were particularly worried to us one was the cheerios brand which in the us is
24:40as familiar as corn flakes or wheat spicks are in the uk and we also looked at their golden grahams
24:45product golden grahams are packed with so much sweet honey graham taste awesome general mills high
24:52octane fun advertising aimed at the kids in america showed that they were targeting the exact same market
24:59as kellogg's knowing what was coming the development team at kellogg's got to work and came up with some
25:05new products to rival the us newcomers you know the level of seriousness that you know we saw in this
25:12new development it also showed our commitment to trying to you know fight our corner and our strategy
25:18quite simply was to come up with kellogg's products that were similar they had golden grahams we brought
25:23brought out a product called golden crackles they had cheerios we came out with honey nut loops
25:28these nutty wonders burst onto our screens showing off the very same honey goodness of brands like
25:37cheerios we got those products into marketplace before the nestle products so actually from a
25:43consumer point of view ironically cheerios was seen as a copy of honey nut loops which i'm sure
25:49drove them crazy from kellogg's the lesson was look the market can change extremely rapidly
25:56honey nut loops had thwarted nestle's launch of cheerios but the cereal titan was not going to
26:03give up spending millions on advertising they battled it out until their best-selling cereals became
26:09household names alongside kellogg's and weatabix by the mid-90s but in the fight to be number one britain's
26:16cereal giants had ignored one of the biggest threats to the entire industry in the 90s britain was seeing
26:23a dramatic rise in obesity levels cereals became a major battleground in the fight against fat
26:31marketing guru guy longworth joined kellogg's at this time and was tasked with showing that the
26:37company cared during the time that i was at kellogg's it was clear that we were likely in the uk and
26:46island to go down the same road the united states had where there'd been a very significant rise in
26:53obesity over a period of time and there are all sorts of complex causes for that that you know are
27:01not easy to particularly understand or to fix but we were certainly very aware that we had a significant
27:08responsibility to try and provide as healthy as possible foods at great value that people can
27:15afford with kellogg's taking the flak their old foes were making the most of their image for providing
27:22a healthy nutritious breakfast life was sweet at wheatabix someone's at their wheatabix i mean we were
27:28seeing them grow on a regular basis year in year out and yeah it was it was concerning and in 1997
27:37after over 60 years of trying wheatabix finally overtook kellogg's cornflakes as britain's best
27:44selling cereal it was a very close race and eventually in the 90s wheatabix did overtake
27:51kellogg's there was a huge amount of excitement when wheatabix took that number one cereal spot having
27:58been behind kellogg's cornflakes for such a long time i think wheatabix has always positioned itself as a
28:03healthy start to the day kellogg's had a lot of different cereal variants out there and perhaps
28:09maybe took their eye off the ball in the in the sort of the short term to allow us to take that
28:14that market positioning i think up until then we had been had had the number one brand and to have
28:20someone come in and gradually grow their brand to that point was concerning we were being challenged
28:27and we wanted to win in every category that we competed in i think the thing about wheatabix that
28:33is interesting is it just had one really big cool business and obviously in the wheat biscuit
28:39segment we didn't have an offer so desperate were they to regain their top spot and hit wheatabix's
28:45profits that kellogg's began a top secret project to develop their own wheat cereal biscuit you know it
28:51sounds simple because you look at it and you go well yeah you should be able to make that i think
28:56that's something that that that we'd have been doing for years it's not quite as simple as as it as
29:02it would seem whilst wheatabix was hugely popular we went to great lengths to develop a product we spent
29:07a lot of time and effort on it uh we you know started manufacturing but it became pretty clear pretty
29:13quickly that it didn't travel particularly well it was difficult to make a wheat biscuit i think it was how
29:20the thing held together so you know how the actual product um held together and how it was consistently
29:25you know going to be a good product when it was shipped and delivered and opened that's where it
29:31came to i think conclusion that this wasn't going to work kellogg's wheatabix style biscuit didn't even
29:38make it to the shelves in the end we had to pull the launch it was a pretty costly mistake
29:43and so did you know that kellogg's actually attempted to make their own winter biscuit in the 90s um i've
29:53never heard that no i had no idea really oh my goodness i don't even know if wheatabix anybody
30:00senior or wheatabix knew that either that's given me goosebumps that shows we had them running scared
30:06then kellogg's gave up on the wheat biscuit but needed their own cereal to satisfy a population
30:12thinking seriously about eating more healthily guy longworth was tasked with finding out what
30:18people now wanted kellogg's was not asleep at the wheel and innovated fast we went out and talked to
30:26our customers what we found was that you know fat was the big enemy the advice may seem obvious enough
30:31eat less fatty foods and take more exercise but it comes with a stark warning unless we change our pattern
30:38of behavior in britain will have the same level of obesity as the united states in less than 10 years
30:44time to meet consumer demand for low-fat cereals kellogg's turned to a product that had been around in
30:52america since the mid-1950s it was originally made for working men to provide a healthy nutritious start to
31:00the day the reformulation of special k basically gave you a better product it was a healthier product
31:09it was a multi-grain product kellogg's relaunched its rice whole wheat and barley flakes with 15
31:16sugar as a healthy breakfast and the basis of a balanced diet for women wanting to stay in shape
31:23we understood at the time that a lot of women were looking for ways to help them manage their weight
31:29so kellogg's uh special k repositioned itself to a shape management brand and we changed the line
31:38to look good feel special it's only 190 calories when you're eating a sensible diet every little helps
31:49get in shape it was very much a glamorous brand it certainly become a fashionable brand it was a
31:59aspirational brand in some ways and it really took off from that perspective and it gave it a whole
32:04new lease of life it was the breakthrough kellogg's needed special k's healthy eating weight loss
32:11message aimed at women made it an incredible success i believe we increased sales by over 100
32:18and it was clear we were on to a big winner not content with the huge sales they were achieving
32:24kellogg's wanted to make special k less of a breakfast and more of a lifestyle around this
32:29time we also were looking for a way to you know encourage people to eat breakfast cereal not just
32:37at breakfast time but at other times during the way seeing an opportunity kellogg's commissioned a
32:42study at purdue university to look at ways their cereal could help people lose weight and the results were
32:49astonishing we found that if you ate a bowl of kellogg's cereal for breakfast and then exchanged
32:56your lunch or dinner for another bowl of kellogg's cereal you would leave lose on average six pounds
33:02overdone it this christmas then why not try the special k dropper gene size two-week challenge
33:07the initial campaign that that went with special k and the two-week challenge was was very very
33:12successful um people would identify with it people could do it it became a talking point you know
33:19people would say have you done the two-week challenge it almost became you know so well known and even
33:23today people will will identify with it by appealing to weight-conscious women special k had gone from
33:29being a popular cereal to a cultural phenomenon with dieters up and down the country tucking into their two
33:35bowls a day but not everyone was a fan two of your meals a day were meant to be one bowl of special k
33:42i think so i mean breakfast a bowl of special k lunch a bowl of special k and then dinner was
33:47a small meal and the idea was you'd lose weight which i imagine you probably would because that's
33:51not very much food you know you said funny because it's you know now you look back on it and think i'm
33:55amazed they were allowed to do that but at the time it was huge i mean basically being hungry all the
34:03time is that is that is that a great way to go about what you eat eventually criticism started to
34:11mount that special k was nothing more than a sexist campaign targeted at women i think at the at the
34:19time i mean it was the special k diet was was hugely successful and very often with things that are so
34:25successful and become so successful there can become a bit of a a backlash against um and we
34:32probably should have changed campaign and changed dynamics sooner than we did britain's appetite for
34:38health had become more than about body image there was inner health which was very much bran fiber
34:45movement and then there was outer health which was beauty bikini swimsuit health and they were completely
34:51different worlds it did feel by then that actually we could do with something a bit new a bit more
34:56filling a bit more nourishing and as we began paying closer attention to the nutritional value of
35:03our cereal it was crunch time for sugary cereals
35:07by the mid-noughties the uk's obsession with healthy food had its sights firmly on the cereal industry
35:21and just one acronym seemed to matter hfss so the hfss regulations are food that's deemed to be high
35:30in fat salt sugar they'll be restricted from certain locations uh in the supermarket as you as you walk
35:36around there are hidden hazards in too many cereals which are promoted as being healthy or good for
35:42children according to the consumers association they want to shame food manufacturers into reducing
35:48sugar salt and fat in cereals well i think there's a combination of what consumers are concerned about
35:54and what you know the regulatory authorities are concerned about so we saw salt sugar fat at different
36:02times become the pinch point but most in the firing line were the sugary cereals which had for decades
36:10been marketed to children 12 household favorites were found to have more than 30 percent sugar content
36:17kellogg's frosties had the highest sugar amount with 37 grams per 100 grams of cereal honey monsters
36:25sugar puffs were found to contain 35 grams of sugar and kellogg's coco pops were also found to have 35
36:32grams of sugar per 100 grams in 2007 restrictions were introduced limiting the exposure of hfss cereals to
36:42children we've got to be responsible nowadays so you know we only push and promote our mascots
36:49on food that's not high in fat salt and sugar we've not advertised frosties for years now our class
36:56tony has been in semi-retirement now kellogg's cornflakes but with a dosing of sugar on full of guilt but
37:03who cares thing with frosties compared to cornflakes was you always got a slightly harder bite because of
37:10the frosting um let's see if they still got that yeah still good less sugar than in my days i probably
37:18prefer the the older formula because i'm i'm a child of the 70s and 80s so i prefer the original but i
37:24understand why they've done that but the years of bad press for the cereal industry had tarnished the
37:30reputation of the bigger brands i think it's fair to say that probably kello's because of market leader
37:36was the the you know the the the the the center of attention um in the nutrition debate um versus
37:43some of our competitors who may have got you know an easier ride by 2010 the cereal landscape was changing
37:53we used to have rice krispies it was just those classic cereals wasn't it the kind of frosties sugar
38:00puffs cocoa pops and that was what we had for breakfast pretty much every single day as kids
38:07a new tech savvy generation used the internet for their own research into what really constituted
38:13a good start to the day and ella mills was one of them it was a really personal journey for
38:19into better word to start with i'd got very ill when i was university back in 2011 and had spent a
38:25year in and out of different hospitals on all kinds of steroids and beta blockers and antacids and i
38:32hit a real rock bottom with my mental health and my physical health and i became very interested in
38:36the impact of how we eat and how we live our lives on our health and on our well-being i started to turn
38:41over the back of packs and was a bit surprised by the ones that you think are healthy and actually
38:45aren't quite so much so starting as a simple recipe blog deliciously ella quickly gained traction
38:53deliciously ella has become the fastest selling debut cookbook ever ahead of jamie oliver and nigella
39:01she's shot to fame blogging from her south london home and her website now has more than 17 million
39:07hits you know when we started we had a marketing budget about five pounds so you know you're trying
39:13to compete with a you know brands that have been going decades if not infinitely longer who have tens of
39:20millions if not more to spend on their marketing and we have a social media page within five years
39:27deliciously ella launched her first 100 plant-based no sugar no additive cereal it does look like a
39:34high-end product and it's probably quite an expensive product to be honest looks looks like there's quite
39:41decent amount of coconut in this i mean i'm probably gonna be a bit biased it's quite a heavy too you feel
39:57like there's an element of hard work in it you sort of think it might be healthier i think you can
40:04probably tell that it is a bit more natural for want of a better word because it does
40:12it's simpler in that sense so a 45 gram serving 174 calories it's slightly more
40:19wheatabix two biscuits 136 calories it's probably got more fat in it because of the coconut in it
40:26deliciously ella was just one in a whole range of more health focused cereal brands that exploded in
40:32the 2010s including rude health we were just following our nose and doing what we felt was
40:39right but when somebody like nigella lawson um is buying it and asking her delhi to get it does feel
40:44like maybe we're not insane there is a chance that we're not absolutely mad this could work we could be
40:49on to something reluctant to miss out on a potentially lucrative growth area of the cereal market
40:55kellogg's began developing something new with a nod to their healthy past and a year later in 2018
41:01they launched their own offering i thought was a fantastic product it was a no added sugar granola
41:10under a brand called wk kellogg which kind of harked back to the our founder but kellogg's sugar-free
41:17granola didn't win over the new health savvy buyer i think the challenge is authenticity we were born
41:25with the aim of trying to shift people's consumer habits and trying to get people to buy healthier
41:31food i think brands who've consistently not been so good for you to try and then launch something that
41:38really plays into that category it feels quite at odds with their heritage if we find at certain times
41:44that you know a product's slightly too expensive or sits in too niche a part of the market then yeah you
41:50know that's uh we've tried it we've not we've not lost a great deal it was slightly more expensive
41:54than the than the rest of our products and i think probably for that reason uh it didn't sell that well
42:03costing £3.95 a box kellogg's were unable to woo their customers with their new wholesome cereal
42:09but with tighter regulations around hfss coming into force by the end of 2023
42:14kellogg's have been forced to improve the health credentials of their best love sugary brands
42:20our responsibility is is to offer choice but it's also to innovate and health is one of those areas
42:26where we'll do that in 2018 kellogg's launched a reformulated version of cocoa pops with 50 percent
42:33less sugar cocoa pops um that took two years of development um to take the sugar levels down by 50
42:42percent and have a product that still tasted as great and still turn the milk chocolatey
42:48and the kellogg's reformulation program didn't stop there four out of our five top selling brands are
42:53non-hfss so cocoa pops rice krispies cornflakes and special k but the health purists aren't convinced
43:03that just cutting sugar solves the problem i think what we've seen in the past is that that just shifts
43:10the problem from less sugar to more ultra processed food because you swap one problem for another
43:15certainly that's what we've seen in the past more emulsifiers more stabilizers more kind of fake
43:20sweeteners as opposed to truly being made of nuts seeds whole grains high fiber foods because you
43:27wouldn't be able to do that without increasing the price you know the average bowl of cornflakes with
43:32milk on is about 22 pence uh per bowl given where everybody's at uh particularly nowadays it's a
43:41fantastic value for money uh offering so at the moment it feels like almost we're in a catch 22 we
43:48know we need to make massive changes we know we need to stop eating an ultra processed diet but that's
43:53expensive we're facing massive cost pressures cost of living and inflationary pressures in terms of cost of
43:59ingredients as well and so i think what was really hard is now incredibly difficult because those foods
44:05are a lot more expensive a hundred years on from the original fight between the kellogg brothers
44:11the battle over health versus profit seems very much here to stay it makes complete sense that
44:19everybody's trying to capitalize on that i think that just the question is in 10 years from now
44:24who's going to have won that space our job is to stay in tune and ahead of what our consumers
44:32and our shoppers need health is here to stay
44:53you
45:02you
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