Mini-Wheats Fail A Test

The Federal Trade Commission had to step in Monday to provide the marketers at Kellogg's with a conscience, declaring that Kellogg's claims that Frosted Mini-Wheats will help kids pay better attention in school were false. The company reluctantly agreed to stop making the claims.

But despite the FTC's specific mention of the Internet as a source of the claims, Kellogg's Web site for the brand still features an anthropomorphized Mini-Wheat explaining how eating him and his pals will keep kids "full and focused."

The site also includes a write-up of the study's results. There, we find that kids who eat Mini-Wheats for breakfast perform better "compared to kids who didn't eat breakfast."

Kellogg's didn't study whether kids who eat Mini-Wheats perform better than kids who are doped up on morphine or kids who have been hit on the head by a falling brick, but since the logic is similar, I'm guessing the results would be similar: Eating Mini-Wheats is probably better for them than opiates or head injuries.

Here's the offending commercial spot, which says that Frosted Mini-Wheats are "clinically proven" to increase children's attentiveness by almost 20 percent:

I don't know whether anyone (other than the kinds of people who are taken in by Nigerian e-mail scams) believed the nonsense spewed by that ad. But the Wall Street Journal may be right in saying the FTC is "sending a signal" to other companies who might otherwise be inclined to invest in advertising of the most inane, misleading sort.

Kellogg's confirms that it agreed to stop making the claims, but, incredibly, it is still standing behind them, though it said in a statement that it has "adjusted our communication to incorporate FTC's guidance."