Kids\\\' cereals are healthier, ads aren\\\'t - empowherkids

They are offsetting those benefits by targeting kids with more ads for their unhealthiest products, according to a report issued on Friday.

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The findings, from the "Cereal Facts" study from Yale University's Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity, land amid growing alarm over diet-related health costs in the United States -- where nearly one-third of U.S. children are overweight or obese.

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Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center, applauded recipe tweaks that have improved the nutrition profile of cereals from companies like Kellogg Co, General Mills Inc and Post Holdings Inc, but said there is still ample room for improvement.

"It's not enough and the companies are still using all their marketing muscle to push their worst cereals on children," Brownell said.

Spending to promote child-targeted cereals totaled $264 million in 2011, up 33 percent from 2008, according to the study, which followed up a similar report from three years ago.

The report called out aggressive marketing of cereals like General Mills' Reese's Puffs, Kellogg's Froot Loops and Post's Fruity Pebbles to children. It said those brands rank among the lowest for nutrition and the highest for added sugar.

Regular Cheerios and Frosted Mini-Wheats have some of the highest nutrition scores, but ads for those products are more likely to be targeted at adults, the report said.

"Rudd tends to look at the glass half empty. I look at it as half-full and rising," said Elaine Kolish, director of the Council of Better Business Bureaus' Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI), a voluntary self-regulation program for food marketed to children.