I was amazed to see that Denmark will not permit the addition of nutrients to breakfast cereals (Kellogg's cuts sugar to placate critics, August 13). In Britain, government surveys have repeatedly shown that teenage diets, especially for girls, are alarmingly deficient in calcium and iron.
The addition of these minerals to bread and breakfast cereals plays an important part in ensuring our dietary intake is sufficient. Teenagers should be encouraged to eat more of these cereal-based foods, which also provide significant amounts of dietary fibre.
Alexander Waugh
Director, Grain Information Service
The frosty news over Kellogg's reduced sugar initiative ought to provide a timely reminder that industrial sugar is a dangerous commodity that profitably services more than just "cereal offenders". In its six centuries of global expansion, there has never been anything "natural" about pure sucrose, other than the ironic fact that although there has never been a biological need for the white stuff, it was and is, according to the Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz, "capitalism's favourite child".
It has become, in its indirect and ubiquitous forms, very much part of the natural architecture of fast foods and processed profits.
Wealth, not health, has been the driver throughout its infamous history, but if we could harness the formidable pester power of our kids then Kellogg's might only be the first of many big food giants slain by the financial health warning that industrial sugar is ultimately poison.
Ron Noon
Liverpool
