Disturbing Food Products

I like to look through the coupons on Sunday.  I have fond memories of sitting around the kitchen table with my family, all of us drinking coffee and having some special bakery item, each of us reading the Sunday news paper.  My mom used to have this little Zipper Clipper- some sort of automatic scissors for clipping coupons.

So, every Sunday, it's a special event that I've continued with my family.

Most Sundays, I find some sort of coupon to clip.  However, I'm growing more and more concerned by the disturbing trend in food products being advertised.

Now, I don't have TV, so I miss out on some of these ads on TV, so I guess it's all that much more disturbing when you come across the advertisement in the paper.  Things like:

Quaker Perfect Portions Instant Oatmeal.

Quite simply, this is the baby food, metal/plastic packet packaging of the same instant oatmeal that I grew up tearing out of a paper packet and eating out of a mug.  I don't know why this product is necessary.  It really sickens me that we need another non-recyclable, single-use container for oatmeal.

And on top of that, how are you supposed to make lumps in this type of container?!

Then there's the New Honey Bunches of Oats GREEK!

WHOA! Made with real Greek yogurt.

My question is:  why would you want to put your milk on your cereal before you put the milk on your cereal?  It doesn't make any sense.  If you're using the cereal as a granola topping for Greek yogurt, then you don't want the cereal to taste like the yogurt- you want it to taste like granola.  And, now that you've preloaded your product with a dairy product, you've lost a portion of the people who still eat cereal, but eat it with Rice Drink or Soy Milk.


A bit short sighted on the product development, aren't we?  Or maybe it's just desperate.

I think that food manufacturers have a lack of understanding on how people buy food.  They buy the food that their parents bought- what they were raised on.  If they just maintained the great products, then we would all be much happier and we wouldn't be barraged with these poorly conceived products.