History Main / AdjacentToThisCompleteBreakfast

Simple. Just set your sugar-laden product (in a nice place setting) alongside toast, bacon, cheese, pancakes, fruit, vegetables, orange juice, milk, etc., and advertise that the cereal is an essential ''part'' of this complete breakfast. After all, if Choco Woofers look right at home amidst all those other wholesome foods, they must be perfectly healthful, right?

Breakfast cereals aimed at kids allure their target audience with bright colors, cute cartoon mascots, and of course tons of sugar. But the parents are the ones who have to fork over the cash, and they're not going to invest $3.99 in future dental bills. So how can you, the advertiser, convince Mom that [[ChocolateFrostedSugarBombs Choco Woofers]] are actually [[BlatantLies harmless, even healthful, and provide the vitamins and minerals that her growing child needs]]?

Simple. Just set your sugar-laden product (in a nice place setting) alongside toast, bacon, cheese, pancakes, fruit, vegetables, orange juice, milk, etc., and advertise that the cereal is an essential ''part'' of this complete breakfast. After all, if you need Choco Woofers to complete a breakfast that looks pretty solid already, they must be perfectly healthful, right?

The claim is technically a legal requirement, but, like a StealthCigaretteCommercial, the companies have hidden the obvious beneath the implications. (After all -- ''really!'' -- if you're still hungry after eating a bowl of cereal, do you cook yourself some eggs and bacon, or make toast? Or do you just grab the cereal box and pour yourself another bowl?)

In short, your Choco Woofers are "part of a complete breakfast" in much the same way that chocolate cake is "part of a complete dinner": as a delicious dessert that tastes good but doesn't add anything to the meal but calories.

Breakfast cereals aimed at kids tend to be candy in a bowl -- bright colors, cute cartoon mascots, and of course tons of sugar. But you've got to sell it to the parents, who aren't going to invest $3.99 in future dental bills. So how can you, the advertiser, convince Mom that ChocolateFrostedSugarBombs are actually [[BlatantLies harmless, even healthy, and have all the vitamins and minerals her growing kid needs]]?

* A cereal touted for its independent nutrition content once poked fun at this trope.

->''I am curious about the expression, "Part of this complete breakfast." The way it comes up is, my 5-year-old will be watching TV cartoon shows in the morning, and they'll show a commercial for a children's compressed breakfast compound such as "Froot Loops" or "Lucky Charms", and they always show it sitting on a table next to a some actual food such as eggs, and the announcer always says: "Part of this complete breakfast." Don't they really mean, [[TropeNamer "Adjacent to this complete breakfast]]", or "On the same table as this complete breakfast"? And couldn't they make essentially the same claim if, instead of Froot Loops, they put a can of shaving cream there, or a dead bat?''
-->--'''Creator/DaveBarry''', [[http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/10/03/1845203/tips-for-writers.html#ixzz1WKpIsczl "Tips for Writers"]]

** NTNO'CN also parodied a British breakfast cereal based on porridge oats (but with lots of added sugar and other strange ingredients not to be found in regular porridge). The regular advert showed happy smiling kids being waved off to school on dark cold winter mornings by doting mothers. The advert was enhanced to show each kid enveloped in a warm glowing aura denoting the warm healthy feeling of starting the day with Redibrek oats. The parody kept the happy families and glowing aura surrounding the kids - only it was tinged an unhealthy green. The voiceover said
--> Give ''your'' kids that Redibrek glow. (beat). Send them to school in Sellafield. [[note]]Sellafield, formerly called Windscale, is the home of a dodgy nuclear power plant which on three separate occasions very nearly went Chernobyl.[[/note]]

* Kellogg's was [[http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/05/30/187330235/no-frosted-mini-wheats-don-t-make-your-kids-smarter sued]] for false advertising claiming "A clinical study showed kids who had a filling breakfast of Frosted Mini-Wheats cereal improved their attentiveness by nearly 20 percent." This was 20% ([[ArtisticLicenseMath rounded up from 11%]]) over kids who had ''no breakfast'' at all. Obviously, the kids who had Mini-Wheats were more attentive because they weren't hungry, not because of the Mini-Wheats.

* Kellogg's was [[http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/05/30/187330235/no-frosted-mini-wheats-don-t-make-your-kids-smarter sued]] for false advertising claiming "A clinical study showed kids who had a filling breakfast of Frosted Mini-Wheats cereal improved their attentiveness by nearly 20 percent." This was 20% ([[ArtisticLicenseMathematics rounded up from 11%]]) over kids who had ''no breakfast'' at all. Obviously, the kids who had Mini-Wheats were more attentive because they weren't hungry, not because of the Mini-Wheats.

* Kellogg's was [[http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/05/30/187330235/no-frosted-mini-wheats-don-t-make-your-kids-smarter sued]] for false advertising claiming "A clinical study showed kids who had a filling breakfast of Frosted Mini-Wheats cereal improved their attentiveness by nearly 20 percent." This was 20% (rounded up from 11%) over kids who had ''no breakfast'' at all. Obviously, the kids who had Mini-Wheats were more attentive because they weren't hungry, not because of the Mini-Wheats.

* Frosted Flakes doesn't associate with other breakfast foods, but still tiptoes this trope - the commercials always associates eating them with a healthy activity like playing sports. "''The taste of Tony's Frosted Flakes brings out the tiger in you'' ''([[BreakingTheFourthWall and you!]]''). the activity aspect is to distract you from the fact that all you are eating is literally ''corn flakes with frosting on them'', presented next to exercise. Sometimes it even shows the child eating their cereal at a picnic table at the park the activity is about to take place in.[[note]][[FridgeLogic (Don't we all eat our breakfast at the park? And not a simple, easy to consume one like a bagel; but one requiring chilled milk and dishes to clean?)]][[/note]]

* ''NotTheNineOClockNews'' did a spoof advert for breakfast cereal, announcing
--> ''Kelloggs Cornflakes. Part of a nutritious breakfast. Especially when sprinkled over food.''

* As pictured above, [[ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes Calvin]] eats cereal that takes five grapefruits and a dozen bran muffins to even out the sugar (and possibly more, since Hobbes trails off while explaining this).

->''I am curious about the expression, "Part of this complete breakfast." The way it comes up is, my 5-year-old will be watching TV cartoon shows in the morning, and they'll show a commercial for a children's compressed breakfast compound such as "Froot Loops" or "Lucky Charms, " and they always show it sitting on a table next to a some actual food such as eggs, and the announcer always says: "Part of this complete breakfast." Don't they really mean, [[TropeNamer "Adjacent to this complete breakfast]], " or "On the same table as this complete breakfast"? And couldn't they make essentially the same claim if, instead of Froot Loops, they put a can of shaving cream there, or a dead bat?''
-->--'''DaveBarry''', [[http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/10/03/1845203/tips-for-writers.html#ixzz1WKpIsczl "Tips for Writers"]]

A newer variant of this is pulled by health products, particularly diet pills and nutritional supplements, where the ad claims the product will help you lose weight and/or be healthy when taken "with diet and exercise"; of course, it's the diet and exercise that provide most of the effect, with the pills or nutritional supplements doing little if any actual work. (And they have a necessary legal obligation of their own, in that they are "not intended to prevent, diagnose, or treat any disease".)

A Subtrope of FalseCause, as correlation (a fruit next to the sugary cereal) does not equal causation (the nutritional content of the breakfast is 90% from the fruit and 10% from the cereal, not the 50/50 split advertisers want you to imagine).

The claim is technically a legal requirement, but, like a StealthCigaretteCommercial, the companies have hidden the obvious beneath the implications. (After all -- ''really!'' -- if you're still hungry after eating a bowl of cereal, do you cook yourself some eggs and bacon? Or make toast? Or do you just grab the cereal box and pour yourself another bowl?)

In reality, your Choco Woofers are "part of a complete breakfast" in much the same way that chocolate cake is "part of a complete dinner": as a delicious dessert that tastes good but really isn't that good for you.

Compounding the issue is the fact that, in the 1950s and 60s, having sugar added to a breakfast cereal was actually its ''selling point.'' You normally added your own sugar to your cereal anyway, and a pre-sweetened cereal meant you could save a step (and that parents could know ''how much'' added sugar their kids were getting). By the end of the 1970s, though, [[ScienceMarchesOn sugar had become demonized]], so sugary cereals took steps to [[UnfortunateIngredients downplay their sugar content]]: They changed their names (e.g. from Sugar Smacks to Honey Smacks, or from Sugar Frosted Flakes to just Frosted Flakes), and they started splitting the sugar into multiple types so that "sugar" no longer appeared at the top of the ingredients list (e.g. instead of being "Sugar, wheat flour, oat flour, ...", the ingredients now read "Wheat and oat flour, sugar, glucose-fructose, ...", even though the contents of the box were identical).

A Subtrope of FalseCause, as correlation (a fruit next to the sugary cereal) does not equal causation (the source of the nutrition in the breakfast equally coming from both fruit and cereal).

* The ''Series/MythBusters'' decided to test the classic line "the box that cereal comes in is more nutritious" by feeding this type of cereal to lab mice and comparing the results to mice that had been fed the cardboard box. The segment will never air, because one of the box mice ate the other two.

* Kellogg's was [[http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/05/30/187330235/no-frosted-mini-wheats-don-t-make-your-kids-smarter sued]] for false advertising claiming "A clinical study showed kids who had a filling breakfast of Frosted Mini-Wheats cereal improved their attentiveness by nearly 20 percent." This was 20% over kids who had ''no breakfast'' at all. Obviously, the kids who had Mini-Wheats were more attentive because they weren't hungry, not because of the Mini-Wheats.

* The ''Series/MythBusters'' decided to test the classic line "the box that cereal comes in is more nutritious" by feeding this type of cereal to lab rats and comparing the results to rats that had been fed the cardboard box. The segment will never air, because one of the box rats ate the other two.

** A rather amusing bit of the aired segment (near the end) showed them reading the box for the ingredients and nutritional information. Jamie asks [[StatingTheSimpleSolution why they didn't do that in the first place]]; Adam replies that while the nutritional information of the ''cereal'' was on the box, the nutritional information of the ''box'' was strangely lacking. Almost as if the box wasn't meant to be eaten....

In reality, your Choco Woofers are "part of a complete breakfast" in much the same way that chocolate cake is "part of a complete dinner": as a delicious dessert that tastes delicious but really isn't that good for you.

For example, the nutrition panels on cereal boxes in the UK tend to include the vitamins and calcium from average milk on top of those present in the dry cereal by itself, but this is more reasonable. Canadian and US labels show both the pre- and post-milk values.

* The ''MythBusters'' decided to test the classic line "the box that cereal comes in is more nutritious" by feeding this type of cereal to lab rats and comparing the results to rats that had been fed the cardboard box. The segment will never air, because one of the box rats ate the other two.

* ''{{Futurama}}'' mocked this trope in the "[[SugarBowl Purpleberry Pond]]" segment of the "Saturday Morning Fun Pit" episode. An in-show commercial for a breakfast cereal the fake cartoon was effectively advertising had this to say about it:

Simple. Just set your sugar-laded product up in a nice place setting alongside toast, bacon, cheese, pancakes, fruit, vegetables, orange juice, milk, etc., and advertise that the cereal is an essential ''part'' of this complete breakfast. After all, if you need Choco Woofers to complete a breakfast that looks pretty solid already, they must be perfectly healthful, right?

Scam pulled by breakfast cereals. Sure, this [[ChocolateFrostedSugarBombs bowl full of sugar]] ([[SugarBowl not that one]]) is [[BlatantLies healthy, and has the vitamins your body needs]]...

...provided you also eat the toast, bacon, cheese, pancakes, fruit, vegetables, orange juice, milk (etc.) all served on a 5-star table setting to get the ''rest'' of this "complete breakfast" that they depict in their advertisements.

The claim is technically a legal requirement, but like a StealthCigaretteCommercial, the companies have hidden the obvious beneath the implications. (After all -- ''really!'' -- if you're still hungry after eating a bowl of cereal, do you cook yourself some eggs and bacon? Or make toast? Or do you just grab the cereal box and pour yourself another bowl?)

* Frosted Flakes doesn't associate with other breakfast foods, but still tiptoes this trope - the commercials always associates eating them with a healthy activity like playing sports. "''The taste of Tony's Frosted Flakes brings out the tiger in you'' ''([[BreakingTheFourthWall and you!]]''). the activity aspect is to distract you from the fact that all you are eating is literally ''corn flakes with frosting on them'', presented next to exercise. Sometimes it even shows the child eating their breakfast at a picnic table at the park the activity is about to take place in.

* Frosted Flakes doesn't associate with other breakfast foods, but still tiptoes this trope - the commercials always associates eating them with a healthy activity like playing sports. "''The taste of Tony's Frosted Flakes brings out the tiger in you'' ''([[BreakingTheFourthWall and you!]]''). the activity aspect is to distract you from the fact that all you are eating is literally ''corn flakes with frosting on them'', presented next to exercise.

* Frosted Flakes doesn't associate with other breakfast foods, but still tiptoes this trope - the commercials always associates eating them with a healthy activity like playing sports. "''The taste of Tony's Frosted Flakes brings out the tiger in you'' ''([[BreakingTheFourthWall and you!]]''). the acticity aspect is to distract you from the fact that all you are eating is literally ''corn flakes with frosting on them''.