- 1 day ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00who in 2017 took on the breakfast cereal giants and is predicted to make a revenue of 20 million
00:07pounds in 2022 i mean they're delicious absolutely delicious but they are so sweet
00:18they feel like pudding versus maybe like 7am preschool breakfast sugar's the second ingredient
00:24and they don't really have any fiber and they don't really have any protein
00:27i don't think it's probably what we should all be having for breakfast every day
00:32the battle of britain's breakfast cereal has been fought for decades between two main players
00:39american giant kellogg's for most people kellogg's was the name for cereals seven out of ten
00:46households in the uk have got a kellogg product in the cupboard and from north hamptonshire
00:52wheatabix you know we delighted in knocking the points off their sales in order to increase ours
00:59everybody wants to work on the best the leading cereal brand in the uk in the fight for sales
01:05nothing is off limits the sugar was a way of getting the kid to eat grain-based cereal and milk and
01:13frankly if you didn't put the sugar on they wouldn't eat it and as our tastes have changed the battle to
01:18be number one has become fiercer than ever the big boys are being challenged you're going to have to
01:24fight these guys on the beaches you mustn't give them an inch it was the biggest threat i think that
01:29the company had ever faced no question about it this is the story of the fight for britain's breakfast table
01:36you're never untouched
01:48rob morgan is a titan of the food industry for nearly a decade at kellogg's he made sure we'd had our corn
01:55flakes very nice kellogg's cornflakes i spent every thursday afternoon when i was at kellogg's going to
02:03taste tests when we would test the product straight off the line they are kernels of corn that had just
02:10been flattened and steamed and cooked and toasted and then a little bit of sugar and salt added but not
02:16a lot has changed it's the the mother of all cereals the one that started it all but it was a fight
02:21between two brothers that gave us the corn flake in 1894 john harvey and william keith kellogg invented a
02:30healthy breakfast for patients convalescing in their sanatorium in battle creek michigan it was
02:36made from good grains and it was seen as a good thing for people who are recovering from illness
02:42but despite its popularity and health benefits the brothers disagreed over making a profit out of their
02:47creation one of the brothers decided that there was a commercial opportunity and he wanted to develop
02:54the product and actually sell it to people outside the sanatorium his brother john harvey didn't and
03:00resisted this and saw it purely as something that was an altruistic move by them that was purely for
03:05their own patients with brotherly love in short supply william keith left the patients behind and
03:12decided to set up shop wk kellogg went on to establish kellogg's and the rest is history
03:18after modifying his flakes with malt salt and a spoonful of sugar to sweeten them they became
03:24a cheap nutritious and easy breakfast for the american masses but when they first came to britain
03:31us brits didn't love them british consumers were a little bit suspicious at first of this new american
03:37invention so the shift from the classic british breakfast of bacon and eggs to cereals didn't happen
03:43overnight but kellogg's from michigan won us over and in 1938 opened europe's largest cereal factory in
03:52manchester from then on they pushed their healthy credentials and tried to persuade us they were good
03:58for us only the original carries the kellogg's name and there are none crisper none fresher none better
04:06kellogg's cornflakes the only ones fortified with vitamins kellogg's cornflakes had well and truly
04:16pushed our traditional fried grub aside when you've got something that's simple but difficult to make
04:22and difficult to replicate it's a great magical formula to have but recognizing the potential of
04:27a healthy breakfast cereal two wheat millers from northamptonshire made the deal of a lifetime
04:34it still crumbles a bit out the packet doesn't it as it normally is and it's a great biscuit and it's
04:39a fantastic product and you wouldn't want anything better than that for breakfast or any other time
04:45of the day for that matter so i'm martin george my grandfather and father bought wheat bix in 1936
04:54invented by the australians wheat bix was a healthy breakfast biscuit the george family cleaned the wheat
05:01for one of wheat bix's factories but the company had fallen on hard times unfortunately they failed
05:08to pay for it and so father swapped the shares for the wheat and so that's how they came to own it
05:14the george family had acquired a secret the simplest of recipes that has gone head to
05:19head with cornflakes for decades its simplicity was its biggest strength
05:24so wheat bix has always been made in the same way mixed the various ingredients together the malt and
05:32the sugar and the wheat and the whole thing then goes extruded into these um molds that are made of
05:38this shape very difficult to reproduce it was an irritant for us it was a versatile cereal very solid
05:46very dependable it was very good for young infants as their their first food so there was a lot about the
05:52wheat a bix biscuit that was actually very good so in a sense it filled a gap in the market that we
05:57weren't filling there was no love lost between the two cereal rivals kellogg's were you know
06:05international american-based company and we were a british company that was a good start and um you
06:13know we did delighted in knocking the points off their sales in order to increase ours i imagine they
06:19began to think that this little biscuit was going to give them a bit of trouble if it wasn't too
06:24careful by the 1950s kellogg's had over 50 of the cereal market and their share was about to increase
06:31with the end of war rationing kellogg's created a new cornflake-based cereal with an added ingredient
06:37that hadn't been readily available for years they introduced a new fun-filled character to sell it to
06:43the nation's children super energy i need my kellogg's sugar frosted flakes they're delicious sugar toasted
06:51full of super energy i think sugar is is is got a different perception perhaps today than it did
06:59you know the the desire for sugar the desire for nutrition was definitely something that was positive
07:06obesity was not an issue in fact very much the the reverse
07:09in those days people added sugar to their tea and coffee they sprinkled sugar on fruit they put sugar
07:17on desserts and they put sugar on their cereals now kellogg's then responded to this by simply giving
07:22people the sugar on the flake that they would otherwise have added themselves kellogg's new sugary flakes
07:29were a hit and their success encouraged them to come up with more sugary brands and cartoon characters
07:35including an infamous monkey cocoa pops cocoa pops after school at bedtime or for breakfast
07:45kellogg's saw the opportunity of bringing in brands that were very specifically targeted to children and
07:50when i say targeted in terms of the packaging the use of characters on pack and the food itself which
07:55generally was sweeter and and more playful despite the profits being made by kellogg's wheatabix refused to
08:03change their recipe and stuck to their tried and tested formula wheat mix was seen as a very nutritious
08:10cereal which you couldn't always say for sugar puffs and not different things of that sort i don't mean to
08:17be disparaging about that but it was seen as very much better than that the thing we we said when i was
08:23there was that you had to get your kid to eat something in the morning for breakfast and what were the
08:29alternatives if you gave them toast you wouldn't give them a dry piece of toast you would put butter
08:33on it and jam well butter and jam are fat and sugar you put honey on which is high in sugar so the sugar
08:39was a way of getting the the kid to eat grain-based cereal and milk and in those days if you didn't
08:46put the sugar on they wouldn't eat it sales of frosties and cocoa pops soared leaving wheatabix
08:53languishing they now needed a game-changing new product of their own the only way as a company
09:00they could really grow was to bring in a wider range of products and that obviously comes with a huge
09:05danger of investment and cost so it was fraught with risk kellogg's has always been a really big
09:12business wheatabix was a smaller business with less brands the innovation at wheatabix was a lot slower
09:19so when we put the money behind something we knew it was going to work
09:28by the start of the 1970s kellogg's were dominating the british breakfast cereal market
09:34with a raft of different products some healthy some not so one brave all british brand was fighting for
09:42its place at the table kellogg's were the number one cereal brand and they were the ones that we wanted
09:47to beat yeah it was a healthy rivalry wheatabix needed to try and expand its range while staying
09:54true to its healthy beginnings in 1971 a wheatabix executive took a family skiing holiday in switzerland
10:06so the story is that somebody quite senior within the business was away on a skiing holiday
10:11and they were served this muesli for breakfast they thought this is really tasty i wonder if this
10:20would do well in the uk and decided to bring that recipe and alpine was developed within months the
10:29wheatabix boffins had turned an alpine holiday breakfast into a revolutionary cereal which enticed adults
10:36with its natural healthy clean living image from this land of summer richness comes a marvelous old swiss
10:43recipe full of good things wheat and oats full ripe grapes firm young hazelnuts alpen was um always
10:53positioned as a healthy product it was that whole idea of bringing that swiss air into the in into the
10:59breakfast time alpen is a very high good value product in terms of uh nutrition and people were
11:08more inclined to try the up on the basis that it was done by somebody who'd done a really good job with
11:14their main product
11:19yeah it's 21 sugar
11:23it does taste i think like it used to because that's really interesting it doesn't taste anything
11:27like what i think of as a muesli now it's crispy wheat flakes a milk powder
11:38that's quite sweet but the marketing worked alpen boosted wheatabix's market share by around a quarter
11:45in its first year and kellogg's were caught napping i think it was partly this kind of seen as something
11:51a little bit more exotic a little bit more trendy than having if i can say good old boring wheatabix
11:57or cornflakes seeing the ascent of alpen's sales kellogg's set to work developing their very own
12:04version in 1974 they launched a mix of oats maize wheat bran nuts and dried fruit they set themselves
12:13apart from alpen by emphasizing the quality of their homegrown ingredients kellogg's have gathered
12:20together a store of good country things to make a new breakfast food called country store
12:26perhaps the most delicious new breakfast you've tasted yet
12:29it was very much alpen country store you know and it was when we were in the stores it was trying
12:35to get as much space for for country store at the expense of alpen we owned the swissness that swiss
12:43style muesli theirs was more about mouthfeel more about sort of the crunch and that sort of the
12:49texture you don't you don't have to work hard to eat alpen but without the whiff of alpine air
12:55country store failed to appeal to the changing tastes of the new adult market you put your investment
13:00where you're going to get the best return and that wasn't necessarily with country store
13:05alpen were the clear winners in the big brand muesli market
13:08but without knowing they were inspiring a new generation of serial entrepreneurs
13:15two young brothers from bedfordshire were about to enter the fray
13:20there was an awful lot of change happening in the late 60s not least in food
13:25bill jordan's family had been running a mill in biggleswade since 1855 but by the 1960s business was bad
13:33we were very aware of how threatened the industry was and how difficult it was to survive in the
13:40milling industry when everybody else was going down the pan bill and his brother david were
13:46heirs to the family business but in the summer of 69 decided to go on a journey of self-discovery
13:53i was playing in a french band and spent most of my time in the back of a van
13:57i hitched tight across the states from the east to the west bill not only found himself but a new
14:04counterculture cereal that would change his and his family's life this was when i was
14:10fortunate to run into granola i was absolutely bowled over by it was a really interesting
14:16mix of cereals oats seeds nuts fruit in some cases it was nutritious and it was probably the sort of
14:25thing that could be made in an old mill in bedfordshire returning home to biggleswade bill and
14:32his brother mixed variations of oats nuts and seeds and baked them in the agar testing them out on
14:38their mum patricia around the kitchen table early ovens were a bit of a shambles weren't they everyone
14:45used to keep burning ourselves with those trays yeah yeah if you had three stripes three burns on your arm
14:51you're a sergeant who got to run the shift it wasn't fun there was all the fun things we had with
14:56the cereals trying things everything was a bit of a muddle and a laugh and we enjoyed it all when we
15:02were trialing the recipes in the kitchen there were an awful lot of uh recipes that didn't seem to work
15:08they were too soggy too crunchy too brittle there was always something wrong we had a lot of things to
15:14talk about ingredients which hadn't really been recognized before we didn't have preservatives we
15:21didn't have flavorings we had whole grains and so we had a natural advantage in many ways
15:29having spent months perfecting the recipe the brothers quickly realized that breaking into the
15:34cereal market was going to be a challenge it was pretty difficult to get into the big supermarkets which
15:40were obviously full of the big manufacturers product so in 1972 the jordan brothers launched
15:48their granola at the ideal home show but it didn't go quite as planned a lot of people accused us of
15:55selling the bird food which um we were a bit concerned about with hundreds of bags of granola being
16:01produced every week they needed a new approach fast so began going to agricultural fairs and rock concerts
16:08to hand out samples of their new age product i think we sampled granola for the first three
16:14glastonbury festivals and carried on beyond that we had to get into the natural food stores health
16:20food stores delicatessens and we got a lot of support because we were different still containing sugar but
16:28packed full of healthy ingredients by the late 70s jordan's was selling its granola in 1500 health food
16:35stores which is when the supermarket started to take note in the 1980s we were benefiting from the
16:43fact that a lot of the big manufacturers were being criticized for heavy use of sugar consumers were
16:49being told that the box was more nutritious than the contents and we were getting flack too on the
16:55granola side the new york times said what tastes terrible and doubles in sales every 30 days i think by
17:021980 we were selling something like 100 tons of granola a week um by that time we got people like
17:08waitrose stocking us what were you trying to do with the cereal oh it was worldwide domination obviously
17:15while jordan's was cornering the adult market kellogg's continued to make big money selling cereal to
17:21kids and teenagers pin back your ears and listen up fellas i'm gonna tell you how to make your friends
17:26generous you gotta find the key to the frosty's taste on the tops you got a formula on which it's
17:31while tony the tiger had become cool arch rivals weetabix were still promoting a wholesome family image
17:43there was a real divide in cereals that were aimed at adults and cereals that were aimed at kids and it
17:48was very obvious so the ones that were aimed at adults were you know quite generally quite plain on
17:54the pack and were also relatively healthy the ones that were aimed at kids had uh usually some kind
18:03of character kids were finding the colorful advertising and catchy jingles of kellogg's brands
18:09irresistible as mums in supermarket aisles up and down the country were being pestered to purchase
18:28kellogg's sales in their biggest sugary brands rocketed pester power clearly came into selling
18:36kellogg's cereals i won't deny when you put a on pack promotion you put a very attractive um
18:42character on the pack so that you know that when the the family are going around the supermarket
18:47the kid is going to tug the mum's skirt and say i want that packet to take home today
18:53weetabix were struggling to compete and needed to update their image and in 1982 they came up with their
19:00very own characters to rough up their rivals we had better tell them we're not airy fairy cereals all
19:09right because we're a weetabix we're not nothing breakfast we've got a bit of bite we're a weetabix
19:17executives came up with dunk bixie brains crunch and brian the neat wheat gang the characters were great
19:25because each character was just highlighting actually a benefit of weetabix you've got bixie
19:30you've got brain you know you're going to be able to work hard at school it was good fun advertising
19:36but it was still advertising a product that to a lot of kids was seen as fairly dull and boring
19:41so i think our view of the the neat wheat gang was nice try but advertising isolation isn't going to give
19:47you success with kids there was a comment was made that perhaps it was a bit too boisterous now and we
19:52needed to to move away from it in 1989 after seven years the neat wheat gang had gone stale and were
20:00withdrawn by wheat bix leaving kellogg's domination of the kids market undisputed and they were noticing
20:08that their sugary cereals weren't only loved by children frosted flakes just for kids come on like
20:15the adults have to go sneaking around like we can't enjoy these sweet crunchy flakes just as much as kids
20:21daddy are you eating our festive flakes again probably the greatest drivers of market growth
20:27in in the 1980s was the instruction of larger packs even though this was traditionally a kid's cereal
20:33if you put a packet this big into people's homes mum and dad would eat it as well uh and eat it
20:39morning noon and particularly at night after a a night at the pub
20:42but kellogg's didn't rest on their cornflakes knowing adults were eating kids cereal they tried
20:51to develop a sweet cereal aimed at adults just as they had done with the frosty in the 60s
20:57kellogg's took the cornflake and changed the game all right
21:01it's the honey it's the molasses freshly chopped nuts uh yeah just tastes sensational
21:12kellogg's launched the crunchy nut cornflake onto our breakfast tables the honey meant the flakes were
21:1830 percent sugar but their marketing campaign aimed squarely at adults encouraged us to eat as many bowls
21:25as possible kellogg's crunchy nut cornflakes delicious golden flakes of corn and crusted with
21:33honey nuts and brown sugar the trouble is they taste too good crunchy nut cornflakes became kellogg's
21:40second biggest selling cereal as humans we are drawn to salt sugar and fat if you want people to buy
21:47more and more of something then you know adding more sugar is going to be an absolute win and it
21:51dissolves into the milk and makes the milk sweet so it was i mean it was a surefire winner by 1995
21:57kellogg's were unstoppable we couldn't get enough at that point pretty much all the innovation that we
22:03were churning out was working like a dream but kellogg's were about to come under attack not only for the
22:11amount of sugar in their cereal but by an invasion from across the atlantic competitors can come in
22:18in a different way in a different format than perhaps we'd seen before and you know you've got to be
22:25continually on the lookout and preparing for those options to happen
22:35it's 1990 kellogg's are in the top spot for the battle of britain cereal
22:40and a long way clear of two of its major rivals wheatabix and jordans but they were about to be
22:46rocked by a seismic shift in the cereal industry two companies coming together with some of the
22:52world's leading brands the general mills company which was a very strong u.s cereal company joined
22:58forces with nestle and they came together to form what was called the cereal partners worldwide
23:03company the products were branded nestle between them these companies sold more than 25 billion
23:09dollars worth of cereal worldwide many of their biggest sugary brands were unknown to us brits it
23:15was the biggest threat i think that the company had ever faced no question about it you know when
23:19you've got companies of that scale and size coming into the market this was pretty much unlike anything
23:25we we'd seen before so it was a real market disruptor seeing the u.s invasion on the horizon rob and the
23:31team at kellogg's readied themselves for the biggest threat to the company since it began in the u.s general
23:37mills and kellogg's fight each other kind of head to head it's almost like a pepsi coke battle
23:42uh and the battles sometimes can become quite emotional we heard stories of sometimes when
23:48either company increased market share they would actually hire billboards outside the other company's
23:53headquarters and advertise that market share gain to their enemies so when they came into the uk
23:58market a lot of the messages from our u.s colleagues was you're going to have to fight these
24:02guys on the beaches you mustn't give them an inch you know that they're going to you know they're going
24:06to be your next big threat rob knew there was little time to prepare if they lost their number
24:13one spot in the uk it could take decades to win it back at kellogg's we clearly had to come up with a
24:19strategy to to fight this new competitor part of the strategy was a tactical blocking of those brands
24:26that we anticipated would come in from the u.s they had two brands that were particular worried to us
24:32one was the cheerios brand which in the u.s is as familiar as corn flakes or wheatsbix are in the uk
24:39and we also looked at their golden grahams product golden grahams are back with so much sweet honey
24:44graham taste awesome general mills high octane fun advertising aimed at the kids in america showed that
24:52they were targeting the exact same market as kellogg's knowing what was coming the development team at
24:57kellogg's got to work and came up with some new products to rival the u.s newcomers you know the
25:03level of seriousness that you know we saw in this new development it also showed our commitment to
25:10trying to you know fight our corner and our strategy quite simply was to come up with kellogg's
25:15products that were similar they had golden grahams we brought brought out a product called golden
25:19crackles they had cheerios we came out with honey nut loops
25:23these nutty wonders burst onto our screens showing off the very same honey goodness of brands like
25:32cheerios we got those products into marketplace before the nestle products so actually from a
25:38consumer point of view ironically cheerios were seen as a copy of honey nut loops which i'm sure
25:44drove them crazy from kellogg's the lesson was look the market can change extremely rapidly
25:51honey nut loops had thwarted nestle's launch of cheerios but the cereal titan was not going to give
25:58up spending millions on advertising they battled it out until their best-selling cereals became
26:04household names alongside kellogg's and wheatavix by the mid-90s but in the fight to be number one
26:11britain's cereal giants had ignored one of the biggest threats to the entire industry in the 90s britain
26:17were seeing a dramatic rise in obesity levels cereals became a major battleground in the fight against
26:25fat marketing guru guy longworth joined kellogg's at this time and was tasked with showing that the
26:32company cared during the time that i was at kellogg's it was clear that we were likely in the uk and
26:41island to go down the same road the united states had where there'd been a very significant rise in
26:48obesity over a period of time and there are all sorts of complex causes for that that uh you know are
26:56not easy to particularly understand or to fix but we were certainly very aware that we had a significant
27:03responsibility to try and provide as healthy as possible foods at great value that people can
27:10afford with kellogg's taking the flak their old foes were making the most of their image for providing
27:17a healthy nutritious breakfast life was sweet at wheatavix someone's at their wheatavix i mean we were
27:23seeing them grow on a regular basis year in year out and yeah it was it was concerning and in 1997
27:32after over 60 years of trying wheatavix finally overtook kellogg's cornflakes as britain's best-selling
27:39cereal it was a very close race and eventually in the 90s wheatavix did overtake kellogg's there was
27:48a huge amount of excitement when wheatavix took that number one cereal spot having sort of been behind
27:53kellogg's cornflakes for such a long time i think wheatavix has always positioned itself as a healthy start
27:59to the day kellogg's had a lot of different cereal variants out there and perhaps maybe took their
28:05eye off the ball in the in the sort of the short term to allow us to take that that market positioning
28:11i think up until then we had been had had the number one brand and to have someone come in and gradually
28:18grow their brand to that point was concerning we were being challenged and we wanted to win in every
28:24category that we competed in i think the thing about wheatavix that is interesting is it just had
28:29one really big cool business and obviously in the wheat biscuit segment we didn't have an offer
28:36so desperate were they to regain their top spot and hit wheatavix's profits that kellogg's began a top
28:42secret project to develop their own wheat cereal biscuit you know it sounds simple because you look
28:48at it and you go well yeah you should be able to make that i think that's something that that that
28:52wheatavix has been doing for years it's not quite as simple as as it would seem whilst wheatavix was
28:59hugely popular we went to great lengths to develop a product we spent a lot of time and effort on it
29:04uh we you know started manufacturing but it became pretty clear pretty quickly that it didn't travel
29:11particularly well it was difficult to make a wheat biscuit i think it was how the thing held together
29:16so you know how the actual product um held together and how it was consistently you know
29:21going to be a good product when it was shipped and delivered and opened that's where it came to
29:27i think conclusion that this wasn't going to work kellogg's wheatavix style biscuit didn't even
29:33make it to the shelves in the end we had to pull the launch it was a pretty costly mistake
29:40and so did you know that kellogg's actually attempted to make their own winter
29:45biscuit in the 90s um i never heard that no i had no idea really oh my goodness i don't even know
29:53if wheatavix anybody senior or wheatavix knew that either that's given me goosebumps that shows we had
30:00them running scared then kellogg's gave up on the wheat biscuit but needed their own cereal to satisfy
30:06a population thinking seriously about eating more healthily guy longworth was tasked with finding out
30:13what people now wanted kellogg's was not asleep at the wheel and innovated fast we went out and talked
30:20to our customers what we found was that you know fat was the big enemy the advice may seem obvious
30:26enough eat less fatty foods and take more exercise but it comes with a stark warning unless we change our
30:33pattern of behavior in britain we'll have the same level of obesity as the united states in less than 10 years
30:40time to meet consumer demand for low-fat cereals kellogg's turned to a product that had been around in america
30:47since the mid-1950s it was originally made for working men to provide a healthy nutritious start to the day
30:58the reformulation of special k basically gave you a better product it was a healthier product
31:04it was a it was a multi-grain product kellogg's relaunched its rice whole wheat and barley flakes
31:10with 15 percent sugar as a healthy breakfast and the basis of a balanced diet for women wanting to stay
31:16in shape we understood at the time that a lot of women were looking for ways to help them manage their
31:24weight so kellogg's special k repositioned itself to a shape management brand and we changed the line to
31:33look good feel special it's only 190 calories when you're eating a sensible diet every little helps
31:44get in shape it was very much a glamorous brand it certainly become a fashionable brand it was a
31:54aspirational brand in some ways and it really took off from that perspective and it gave it a whole new
32:00life it was the breakthrough kellogg's needed special k's healthy eating weight loss message aimed at
32:07women made it an incredible success i believe we increased sales by over a hundred percent and it
32:13was clear we were on to a big winner not content with the huge sales they were achieving kellogg's wanted
32:19to make special k less of a breakfast and more of a lifestyle around this time we also were looking for
32:27a way to you know encourage people to eat breakfast cereal not just at breakfast time but at other
32:33times during the way seeing an opportunity kellogg's commissioned a study at purdue university to look
32:40at ways their cereal could help people lose weight and the results were astonishing we found that if you
32:47ate a bowl of kellogg's cereal for breakfast and then exchanged your lunch or dinner for another bowl of
32:53kellogg's cereal you would leave lose on average six pounds overdone it this christmas then why not
32:59try the special k drop a gene size two-week challenge the initial campaign that that went with special k
33:06and the two-week charge was was very very successful um people would identify with it people could do it
33:12it became a talking point you know people would say have you done so we charge it almost became
33:17you know so well known and even today people will will identify with it by appealing to weight
33:22conscious women special k had gone from being a popular cereal to a cultural phenomenon with
33:28dieters up and down the country tucking into their two bowls a day but not everyone was a fan two of
33:34your meals a day were meant to be one bowl of special k i think so i mean breakfast a bowl of special k
33:39lunch a bowl of special k and then dinner was a small meal and the idea was you'd lose weight which
33:44i imagine you probably would because that's not very much food you know you said funny because it's
33:49you know now you look back on it and think i'm amazed they were allowed to do that but at the
33:53time it was huge i mean basically being hungry all the time is that is that is that a great way to go
34:01about what you eat eventually criticism started to mount that special k was nothing more than a sexist
34:09campaign targeted at women i think at the at the time i mean it was the special k diet was was hugely
34:17successful and very often with things that are so successful and become so successful there can
34:23become a bit of a a backlash against um and we probably should have changed campaign and changed
34:30dynamics sooner than we did britain's appetite for health had become more than about body image there
34:36was inner health which was very much bran fiber movement and then there was outer health which was
34:42beauty bikini swimsuit health and they were completely different worlds it did feel by then
34:48that actually we could do with something a bit new a bit more filling a bit more nourishing
34:54and as we began paying closer attention to the nutritional value of our cereal
34:59it was crunch time for sugary cereals
35:02by the mid-noughties the uk's obsession with healthy food had its sights firmly on the cereal industry
35:16and just one acronym seemed to matter hfss so the hfss regulations are food that's deemed to be high
35:25in fat salt sugar they'll be restricted from certain locations uh in the supermarket as you as you walk
35:31around there are hidden hazards in too many cereals which are promoted as being healthy or good for
35:37children according to the consumers association they want to shame food manufacturers into reducing
35:44sugar salt and fat in cereals well i think there's a combination of what consumers are concerned about
35:49and what you know the regulatory authorities are concerned about so we saw salt sugar fat at different
35:57times become the pinch point but most in the firing line were the sugary cereals which had for decades
36:05been marketed to children 12 household favorites were found to have more than 30 percent sugar content
36:12kellogg's frosties had the highest sugar amount with 37 grams per 100 grams of cereal honey monsters
36:20sugar puffs were found to contain 35 grams of sugar and kellogg's coco pops were also found to have 35
36:27grams of sugar per 100 grams in 2007 restrictions were introduced limiting the exposure of hfss cereals to
36:37children we got a bit responsible nowadays so you know we only push and promote
36:42our mascots uh on food that's not high in uh fat salt and sugar we've not advertised frosties
36:49for years now hard class tony has been in semi-retirement now kellogg's cornflakes but with a dosing of
36:56sugar on full of guilt but who cares thing with frosties compared to cornflakes was you always got a
37:03slightly harder bite because of the frosting um let's see if they still got that yeah still good
37:09less sugar than in my days i probably prefer the the older formula because i'm i'm a child of the 70s
37:17and 80s so i prefer the original but i understand why they've done that but the years of bad press for
37:23the cereal industry had tarnished the reputation of the bigger brands i think it's fair to say that probably
37:29kello's because of market leader was the you know the the the the center of attention um in the nutrition
37:37debate um versus some of our competitors who may have got you know an easier ride by 2010 the cereal
37:45landscape was changing we used to have rice krispies it was just those classic cereals wasn't it the kind of
37:53frosties sugar puffs cocoa pops and that was what we had for breakfast pretty much every single day as kids
38:02a new tech savvy generation used the internet for their own research into what really constituted a
38:08good start to the day and ella mills was one of them it was a really personal journey point of better
38:15word to start with i'd got very ill when i was university back in 2011 and had spent a year in out of
38:21different hospitals on all kinds of steroids and beta blockers and antacids and i hit a real rock
38:28bottom with my mental health and my physical health and i became very interested in the impact of how we
38:32eat and how we live our lives on our health and on our well-being i started to turn over the back of
38:36packs and was a bit surprised by the ones that you think are healthy and actually aren't quite so much so
38:44starting as a simple recipe blog deliciously ella quickly gained traction
38:48deliciously ella has become the fastest selling debut cookbook ever ahead of jamie oliver and nigella
38:56she's shot to fame blogging from her south london home and her website now has more than 17 million
39:02hits you know when we started we had a marketing budget about five pounds so you know you're trying
39:08to compete with a you know brands that have been going decades if not infinitely longer who have tens of
39:15millions if not more to spend on their marketing and we have a social media page within five years
39:22deliciously ella launched her first hundred percent plant-based no sugar no additive cereal it does look
39:29like a high-end product and it's probably quite an expensive product to be honest looks looks like there's
39:34quite decent amount of coconut in this i mean i'm probably going to be a bit biased
39:49it's quite a heavy too you feel like there's an element of hard work in it you sort of think it might be healthier
39:58i think you can probably tell that it is a bit more natural for one to a better word because it does
40:07it's simpler in that sense so a 45 gram serving 174 calories it's slightly more
40:14wheaty bix two biscuits 136 calories it's probably got more fat in it because of the coconut in it
40:20deliciously ella was just one in a whole range of more health focused cereal brands that exploded in
40:27the 2010s including rude health we were just following our nose and doing what we felt was
40:34right but when somebody like nigella lawson um is buying it and asking her deli to get it it does feel
40:39like maybe we're not insane there is a chance that we're not absolutely mad this could work we could be
40:44on to something reluctant to miss out on a potentially lucrative growth area of the cereal market
40:50kellogg's began developing something new with a nod to their healthy past and a year later in 2018
40:56they launched their own offering i thought was a fantastic product um it was a no added sugar granola
41:05under a brand called wk kellogg which kind of harks back to the uh our founder but kellogg's sugar-free
41:12granola didn't win over the new health savvy buyer i think the challenge is authenticity we were born
41:20with the aim of trying to shift people's consumer habits and trying to get people to buy healthier
41:26food i think brands who've consistently not been so good for you to try and then launch something that
41:33really plays into that category it feels quite at odds with their heritage if we find at certain times
41:39that you know products slightly too expensive or sits in too niche a part of the market then yeah
41:44you know that's uh we've tried it we've not we've not lost a great deal it was slightly more expensive
41:49than the than the rest of our products and i think probably for that reason uh it didn't sell that well
41:58costing three pounds 95 a box kellogg's were unable to woo their customers with their new wholesome cereal
42:04but with tighter regulations around hfss coming into force by the end of 2023 kellogg's have been
42:10forced to improve the health credentials of their best love sugary brands our responsibility is is to
42:17offer choice but it's also to innovate and health is one of those areas where we'll do that in 2018
42:23kellogg's launched a reformulated version of cocoa pops with 50 percent less sugar cocoa pops
42:30um that took two years of development um to take the sugar levels down by 50 and have a product that
42:39still tasted as great and still turned the milk chocolatey and the kellogg's reformulation program
42:45didn't stop there four out of our five top selling brands are non-hfss so cocoa pops rice krispies corn
42:53flakes uh and special k but the health purists aren't convinced that just cutting sugar
43:00solves the problem i think what we've seen in the past is that that just shifts the problem from
43:06less sugar to more ultra processed food because you swap one problem for another certainly that's what
43:11we've seen in the past more emulsifiers more stabilizers more kind of fake sweeteners as opposed
43:16to truly being made of nuts seeds whole grains high fiber foods because you wouldn't be able to do
43:23that without increasing the price you know the average bowl of cornflakes with milk on is about 22 pence
43:31uh per bowl given where everybody's at uh particularly nowadays it's a fantastic value for money uh offering
43:40so at the moment it feels like almost we're in a catch 22 we know we need to make massive changes we
43:45know we need to stop eating an ultra processed diet but that's expensive we're facing massive cost pressures
43:51cost of living and inflationary pressures in terms of cost of ingredients as well and so
43:56i think what was really hard is now incredibly difficult because those foods are a lot more
44:01expensive a hundred years on from the original fight between the kellogg brothers
44:06the battle over health versus profit seems very much here to stay
44:11it makes complete sense that everybody's trying to capitalize on that i think that just the
44:17question is in 10 years from now who's going to have won that space our job is to stay in tune
44:24and ahead of what our consumers and our shoppers need health is here to stay
44:36so
44:49so
44:50you
Be the first to comment