Cheerios - the ‘hard’ data
So, to follow up on the Cheerios thing from HERE….
An actual paper was found! ::shocked gasps from the audience::
Apparently, the data is from Wesnes KA, Pincock C, Richardson D, Helm G, Hails S. Breakfast reduces declines in attention and memory over the morning in school children. Appetite. 2003 Dec;41(3):329-31. Colour me shocked, though I suppose I should have expected it. No company - these days - is going to put something like this on their product, without the evidence to back it up.
A very nice review of the paper and how Nestle interpreted the results can be found HERE.
“… If we leave out the amazingly bad graphics, there is still the data. First, there is apparently no attribution of where it came from, except that it was done by CDR and Reading Scientific Services. No paper citation, no link. Is that too much to ask for? While a scientific paper may still scare away people, these days nobody will run screaming away from the breakfast table when encountering an URL. To my mind any unreferenced claims like this should be regarded as “we made it up”. …”
There is a bias in the data though, which is fairly obvious. They tested Shreddies, Cheerios, a ‘glucose drink’ and ‘no breakfast’, leaving out other, healthier choices. (Though they do claim that it’s all measured against a baseline of a complete breakfast, they never define what that was.)
And despite the fact that there is scientific evidence to back this up, I’m still sticking this with the ‘bad science’ tag.
Posted: June 10th, 2007 under bad, science.
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