Bed Time Snack

So lately I have been really bothered by a new commercial on TV for Kellogg's Rice Crispy's.

All shot in black and white with only the cereal box in bright, brilliant colour:

A little girl sits on the couch all dressed for bed in her jammies and slippers when her Mom comes over and says, "How about a bed time snack?" The little girl's face lights up and she yells, "YEAH!" Mom comes back with the bright coloured box, a spoon, bowl and the milk and makes the cereal.

She lovingly puts her arm around her daughter and the both of them listen to the snap, crackle, pop together, oh how touching and sweet, what a special bonding moment that you just must have with your child if you want to be a good parent.

The little girl happily eats her bed time snack and they both go up the stairs arm in arm with love in their eyes for each other and off to bed.

Voice-over: At the end of the day, a bowl of Rice Krispies sounds pretty good. Childhood is calling.

This upsets me. We already have the food companies pushing for us to have 6 meals a day, or three huge meals with "healthy snacks", breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and so on and so on...

The food companies now start brainstorming: 

How can we sell even more food? Hmmmm, I know lets get people eating yet ANOTHER meal in the day. Lets sell the "bedtime snack" meal! 

But, how do we get around what people have been taught that eating before bed is bad? 

Oh, I know lets target a new generation and teach them something different. 

But how will we get past the parents, they know that eating for bed isn't good for you...

Hmmmmm, I know, lets play on their insecurities of not being a good parent because they are all working so hard to buy all this stuff and afford all the food and other crap they don't need. They are mostly only home in the evenings anyway, lets play on this weakness and they won't even notice that we are marketing obesity to their children! 

Good idea! Wow, we are really going to increase profits this year!

We don't need ANOTHER meal! No more snacks! Go to sleep!