Can Cereal Be Healthy? Big Companies Are Trying.

In hindsight, this year’s fiber-forward Super Bowl commercial starring William Shatner may have been a Hail Mary.Using the nickname Will Shat, Mr.

Shatner passes around boxes of Raisin Bran while making puns about bowel movements.He even name-checked a Shih Tzu.Cereal is in trouble.

Despite a brief glimmer of growth during the pandemic, the nearly $13 billion business in the United States has gone soggy.Shoppers last year bought 13 percent less cereal than in 2021, according to Nielsen IQ.

Despite price hikes, dollar sales are declining, too.At a time when gut health, protein content and convenience drive food sales, many Americans view grabbing a breakfast bar or drinkable yogurt — or nothing at all — as easier and healthier than pouring milk over a bowl of ultraprocessed grains from a box.Younger people didn’t grow up with the same cultural or emotional attachment to breakfast cereals as earlier generations raised on cereal ads sandwiched between Saturday-morning cartoons.“Generation Z in particular is not so enthusiastic about cereal for breakfast, and that’s hit the long-established players in the market,” said Richard Caines, a senior analyst with the market research company Mintel.

“They are more enthusiastic about products that have functional health benefits.”Mix in pressure from the “Make America Healthy Again” movement’s push for less-processed food, in addition to the rise of GLP-1 drugs and higher prices for what used to be a budget-stretcher, and you can understand why cereal executives are worried.As it has many times since the first bowl was poured during the Lincoln administration, the industry is returning to cereal’s roots as a health food, born of a Victorian belief that bland grains softened in milk could restart sluggish digestive tracts and ease other maladies.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.If...