Breakfast of Chumps?

In their ads and on their packages, cereal makers often picture pole vaulters or home-run hitters in order to imply that the child who breakfasts on the product will start the day bursting with vitamins and minerals. The implication is unwarranted, an expert testified last week. Robert B. Choate Jr., a former consultant on hunger to the Nixon Administration, told a Senate subcommittee that 40 out of 60 name-brand cereals "fatten but do little to prevent malnutrition."

Choate showed a chart ranking cereals according to the quantities of nine different vitamins, minerals and protein they contain. In a scale of 900, only three products rated as high as 700. The three: Kellogg's Product 19 and General Mills' Kaboom and Total. Two-thirds of the cereals ranked below 100. Among them were the five bestsellers: Kellogg's Corn Flakes, Rice Krispies and Sugar Frosted Flakes, and General Mills' Cheerios and Wheaties ("Breakfast of Champions"). Nabisco's Shredded Wheat ranked last.

Cereal makers replied that Choate had made some unspecified "technical errors," failed to take into account the milk with which most cereals are eaten and neglected to compare the nutritional values of cereals with other breakfast foods. Choate made a different comparison. The lowest ranking 40 cereals, he said, offer "empty calories--a term thus far applied to alcohol and sugar."

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