[Food] Kelloggs Supporting School Breakfast Clubs...

GT49er said:

Those things still used up a greater proportion of the weekly budget though - and not everyone could grow their own veg. either! Milk, sugar, eggs and flour didn't grow on trees (and neither, for that matter, did custard powder and mustard!)

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Clothing was more expensive then, this is from the ONS. Housing costs has doubled.

the proportion of total expenditure on housing has doubled during the last 60 years, from 9% to 18%. On the other hand, the proportion of total spending that went on food has halved (33% to 16%), as has the proportion on clothing (10% to 5%). In 1957, average weekly household expenditure on tobacco made up 6% of total spending.

Thunder Bolt said:

Clothing was more expensive then, this is from the ONS. Housing costs has doubled.

the proportion of total expenditure on housing has doubled during the last 60 years, from 9% to 18%. On the other hand, the proportion of total spending that went on food has halved (33% to 16%), as has the proportion on clothing (10% to 5%). In 1957, average weekly household expenditure on tobacco made up 6% of total spending.

Celebrating 60 years of Family Spending | National Statistical

blog.ons.gov.uk

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Yes, like I said, food accounted for a lot more of the weekly budget back then. 33% as opposed to 16%. Personally, I'm surprised it was only 33% back then - still, official statistics, eh? I still take the official inflation figures with a large pinch of salt, when with my own eyes I see many items in the shops which have gone up 30% to 50% or more!

dsr-burnley said:

OK, I withdraw any suggestion about what went on in the past or whether people were poorer or richer then. It is only tangentially relevant.

The question is, why are people sending children to school without breakfast? Is it lack of funds or is it something else? If it's lack of funds, then a sight of a typical budget of a family that cannot afford the pot of jam and loaf of bread, would be useful.

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If it’s only tangentially relevant then why use it?

As to why kids are going school without breakfast? It will in all likelihood be down to multiple reasons. Lack of funds due to high rent, utilities and food costs. Lack of understanding on how the state can provide assistance or the lack of assistance due to the that help being marginalised by the previous government, poor parenting or parents not being around due to working very low paid jobs. There likely to be more but money or the lack of it with be the root cause.

Butch Willykins said:

There seems to be some misunderstanding around the use of Breakfast clubs.

The vast majority of parents putting their kids into Breakfast Club are doing so because they are working and need the additional childcare in the mornings. Unless you work within walking distance of your kids school it's almost impossible to drop them off at 8.45am and be at your place of work by 9am!

Very few will be going because it's a free meal (which isn't free because Breakfast Club costs £100+ per month per child!)

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This is very true, my son and daughter-in-law are both teachers, both have to travel 10 plus miles to their respective schools, to work. My grandchildren also have to be at their schools (not in the same area), at a similar time, going to breakfast club, just gives the family a bit more time in the morning. They all have to be out the house by7:30.

Brovion said:

Is this the right place for me to complain (again) about Coco Pops? I loved them when I was young and when my kids were little, and one of the things I was looking forward to most with grandchildren was having a cheeky bowl every now and again. However a few years ago I bought some for my grandson. I gleefully poured myself a bowl, took a mouthful - and spat them out. They were horrible, they tasted more like cardboard packing granules. The reason being of course that they've had to change the recipe to meet modern, pearl-clutching, standards. My grandson hated them as well so I haven't bought them again.

People say that sugary breakfast cereals and responsible for childhood obesity. Utter tosh I say, indeed the exact opposite is true and I can prove it. We had them in the 60s and we were all as thin as a row of fence posts. They scrap them and, viola! Kids today are apparently all lardy-arsed fuckers. So it may be counter-intuitive to some but in order to combat childhood obesity we need to bring back 'Traditional Recipe' Coco Pops. And Ricicles (sugar coated rice crispies). And Sugar Smacks. Give the kids a bit of sugar energy first thing in the morning and they'll be buzzing all day.

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What are those teeth looking like?

There's bit more to the story than meets the eye. Kellogs aren't providing the cereal for every (any) school as far as I can make out....

We offer schools the opportunity to apply for a grant of £1000 to help fund a breakfast club. A limited number of grants are available so priority will be given to those schools that have 35% and above of children in receipt of pupil premium funding.

So it's a limited amount of grants, I don't suppose they give them to the same schools every year either. The 'limited number' could mean 1 a year. At this time of Googling,, Google says there are 16,791 primary schools in England. They're not giving £1000 to every school, every year. Helping to 'fund' a breakfast club can mean just buying the plates & board games etc.

Breakfast clubs in school are not free. When youngest Jnr was at school, I had to send him a couple of times due to early appointments. He wanted to go everyday as they had the option of a bacon sandwich along with eggs, cereal, toast (with a variety of toppings).
All very well & good saying to send them off to school with bread & jam but some kids don't actually like jam! Youngest Jnrs preferred breakfast was cornflakes & branflakes mixed together (dry), milk was served on the side (he was weird)., When he encountered 'Fruit & Fibre' then sultanas & banana chips were added to his 'dry' cereal. He caved into milk in the bowl eventually. I bet his cornflakes, branflakes & dried fruit mix had as much sugar in as coco pops. Actually coco pops probably have less, as the're full of aspartame.
Fruit juice is a lot more expensive than 'squash'. 'Fruit bars' are less expensive than 'real, fresh' fruit & last a lot longer. People get conned into this 'no added sugar' crap as well as being led to believe that cereal bars are good for their children. Fruit Juice 'drinks' are the biggest scam ever. E102 was banned for a reason but it's still there under a different name & it's in the drinks people are giving to their kids. There was a brand of fizzy drink that I occasionally had myself as it didn't have sweeteners in & tasted nice, just sugar. They've now sold their soul to big corp who are adding aspartame. I just want pure sugar!!

Kellogs are not being altruistic & some kids do go to school hungry for a multitude of reasons. If, when Jnr was young I said I had run out of branflakes & cornflakes & could only give him bread & jam, he wouldn't have eaten it. You can attempt to force feed kids but it generally doesn't help. I was lucky enough to be able to afford to buy the shit stuff & the healthy stuff, I went for the healthy stuff & neither of my kids drink squash or fizzy drinks as (near in one case) adults.

I do however see people that can't afford it, take their kid(s) to the sweet shop on a Friday afternoon to buy sweets & a magazine/comic with a 'toy' on the front. The comic is to encourage reading. The Beano costs £5 these days! Probably around the same amount as a morning in breakfast club 'sponsored by Kellogs'.

dsr-burnley said:

Then prove it. Show me a budget whereby a family is unable to find the 20p a day that it would cost them to give a child breakfast. Child poverty was much more a thing when benefits were far less generous than they are now, so what has gone wrong?

I'm not saying it can't be done. You may be correct that many thousands of children are coming from houses where every penny is being spent on something more important than the child's breakfast, and if that is so, I want to see why.

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Wasting your time with this. They will not be able to prove it. Unfortunately it's the entitled society we now live in.

dsr-burnley said:

Then prove it. Show me a budget whereby a family is unable to find the 20p a day that it would cost them to give a child breakfast. Child poverty was much more a thing when benefits were far less generous than they are now, so what has gone wrong?

I'm not saying it can't be done. You may be correct that many thousands of children are coming from houses where every penny is being spent on something more important than the child's breakfast, and if that is so, I want to see why.

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Wasting your time with this. They will not be able to prove it. Unfortunately it's the entitled society we now live in.

dsr-burnley said:

There is lots of information, but never yet have I seen a genuine case study showing exactly what a family's incomings and outgoings are and why they can't get hold of (whether paid for or via food banks) a loaf of bread and pot of jam for the child's breakfast.

You seldom heard of children going to school hungry in the seventies or fifties, when there was less money about and food was more expensive and food banks didn't exist.

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Might be an idea to stop digging? You’re coming across as quite ignorant.

Herr Tubthumper said:

Might be an idea to stop digging? You’re coming across as quite ignorant.

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If by "ignorant" you mean that I don't know what people are spending their money on that's more important than their children's breakfast, then you're quite right. I do not know why some children are not getting food when they need it.

Are you equally ignorant of the reason, or do you know the answer but are refusing to tell me?

What is the income and expenditure of a typical family that can't afford to feed its children? I don't think there is any way to solve the problem if we don't know the answer to that question.

A banana and a piece of toast is an okay breakfast and can’t cost too much surely?

If we are in a state where parents can’t afford the most basic of meals we need to do two things;

Overhaul the benefits system and implementation so that no child goes hungry.

Find out what the heck is being done with the money the families do receive.

Are they in debt above their heads? Are they not capable of budgeting? Are they involved in substance misuse? Addiction? Gambling? Is an abusive partner swiping all the benefit money?

Do some simply not care?

It’s fine to stand and shout that the children must be fed and of course they should. Of course. But there is simply no mileage in giving families more and more mkney if is going on paying back pay day loans or is being spend on drugs / booze / fags. Funding a gambling addiction or simply fling into the pockets of parents who don’t care if their kids eat or not.

Yes, cash is part of the solution but education, debt management etc must be part of the discussion.

In the meantime, any government should be finding and implementing a universal breakfast club with healthy, nutritious food available. The same for school lunches.

Which this country can afford to do MANY times over.

SkirlieWirlie said:

Has been the case since 1998, although I only became aware of it today as mentioned in an ad on TV this morning.

My initial thoughts were fairly cynical, assuming declining sales as more and more people avoiding ultra processed, sugar rich foods and this is a 'better' use of their marketing funds to hook kids at a young age, but then it has been a thing for over 25 years.

An alternative view is that many poorer family's are sending children to school on empty stomachs and this may be one of the most nutritious meals of the day, albeit the sugar spike first thing may be as much of a hindrance as a help to them and the teaching staff with regards concentration in class.

So, is this purely a cynical marketing ploy by a large corporate dressed up to be seen as something good to get the young hooked or is there a genuine upside to this due to the lack of alternatives?

https://www.kelloggs.co.uk/en_GB/our-story/feeding-people-in-need/support-for-school-breakfast-clubs.html

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It's probably both. CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) is a huge industry in itself and one that ultimately ends up benefiting a lot of people, regardless of the intentions behind it.

The large corporations get their name attached to something ultimately positive, which looks great from a PR sense, and children from underserved communities get fed before school (which should mean that they are more ready for learning, and over a long period will perform better at school and ideally in the long term, end up having a higher quality-of-life than they would've had without the scheme). The fact Kellogg's have done this for 16 years is wonderful. As someone who often works with larger companies for CSR projects, they are too often one-off, single-impact stories. This still is positive but doesn't make any meaningful long-term change for the audience being served.

Without getting too pretentious though, we live in a capitalist society and we require money to move from profit-focussed business back to society, even if it is in an in-kind form, to help tackle societal inequality. I think it's hard to argue that what Kellogg's is doing isn't good, regardless of whatever you think their intention is - it doesn't actually matter if it makes a difference.

bluenitsuj said:

Wasting your time with this. They will not be able to prove it. Unfortunately it's the entitled society we now live in.

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you being entitled.

dsr-burnley said:

If by "ignorant" you mean that I don't know what people are spending their money on that's more important than their children's breakfast, then you're quite right. I do not know why some children are not getting food when they need it.

Are you equally ignorant of the reason, or do you know the answer but are refusing to tell me?

What is the income and expenditure of a typical family that can't afford to feed its children? I don't think there is any way to solve the problem if we don't know the answer to that question.

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The is to me is part of the problem. Expecting a simple answer to solve a very complicated issue. TBH I’m not sure you/we are necessarily asking the right question….