i_love_breakfast_11_18_2010
Nov. 18, 2010 | General Mills Corporate Communications |
Breakfast campaign aims to keep girls fitter
For some, it’s a familiar refrain: Better health can be achieved through a better breakfast. But it might not be so familiar to teen girls. To change that, General Mills has enlisted the help of a teen actress and singer to help spread the word.
Actress and singer KeKe Palmer is encouraging teen girls aged 14 to 17 to fuel up each morning as part of the "I <3 BKFST" campaign.
Palmer, whose mother is a high school teacher, gained fame for the 2006 film “Akeelah and the Bee,” and currently is the title character in the Nickelodeon sitcom "True Jackson, VP." She also has a new record album set to debut in 2011.
The campaign is designed to attract the attention of teen girls and their parents or guardians. It borrows part of its name from the popular text symbol for love “<3.”
Donations to foster home
I <3 BKFST not only intends to educate teen girls about the benefits of eating breakfast, but the campaign will help a foster home for girls.
Teens who click “like” on Facebook.com/IHEARTBKFST and then pledge to eat breakfast will trigger a General Mills donation of 25 cents for every pledge made through Dec. 22.
The pledges will prompt General Mills to donate at least $5,000, and a maximum of $10,000, to Grace House, a foster home for girls in need located in Birmingham, Ala.
Palmer is the voice behind the message to teen girls to make a “good-for-me” choice to start their day, increasing girls’ odds of having a healthier body weight and lower cholesterol.
Those were traits of girls who participated in the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute Growth and Health Study (NGHS), which was funded in part by the General Mills Bell Institute of Health and Nutrition.
Reaching out to African-American girls The NGHS followed the diets of 2,379 girls who began the study between the ages of 9 and 10. The 10-year study comprised 1,213, African-American girls and 1,166 Caucasian girls who lived in Berkley, Calif., Cincinnati, Ohio, and Washington, D.C.
Based on analysis of the girls’ food diaries, breakfast cereal eaters tended to have lower waist-to-height ratios, lower total cholesterol and lower LDL cholesterol.
Previous findings from the study were released in 2005 and 2008, and cited lower body mass index and improved nutrition, higher milk consumption and increased physical activity for breakfast cereal eaters.
“Given the body of evidence supporting the benefits of breakfast – and breakfast cereal as a good choice – we’re clearly giving our girls a great advantage by reinforcing the importance of the first meal of the day,” says Karol Watson, vice president, Association of Black Cardiologists and I <3 BKFST spokeswoman.
Palmer notes that about half of the girls followed in the study were African-American, "so there is a real purpose for reaching out directly to teen black girls to help them understand the benefits that come with having breakfast."
Legal Disclaimer:
EIN Presswire provides this news content "as is" without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.
