Remember the
parable of the blind men and the elephant? As
each approached an elephant and tried to
describe it, they came up with wildly
disparate answers. One thought it a snake,
another a tree, another a trunk. Because they
were blind, they could not see the big
picture; they described the part of the
elephant they could touch.
Inflation is
something like that. People describe it based
on the way it hits them, and it hits each
family differently. Those with incomes below
the median salary of $56,420 per year are hit
hardest and most likely counting their
pennies. Those with higher incomes shrug off
some of the ways inflation hurts. But make no
mistake, it hurts. Grocery prices are up by 25
percent in the past four years, so you are now
spending $125 for food you paid $100 for four
years ago. To be sure, inflation is waning.
Groceries increased by 2.6 percent between
January 2023 and January 2024, compared to 10
percent the year before. The Federal Reserve
has been grappling with ways to lower
inflation, but they need help fixing supply
chain issues and corporate greed.
Still, inflation
reminds us how disparate our lives are. Some
chafe at inflation, while others shrug it off.
Then, a corporate CEO, Gary Pilnick, who earns
at least $4.9 million a year as CEO of WK
Kellogg Co., offered a novel solution for
families fighting inflation. Let them eat
cereal, he says. Really? Cereal, he says, is
nutritious and delicious. And it’s also
relatively cheap. A bowl of cereal and milk is
not an adequate replacement for a protein,
vegetable, and starch (say chicken, mashed
potatoes, and green beans), nor is it quite as
rib-sticking. But Pilnick arrogantly and
glibly dared offer a Marie Antoinette-like
solution to family meal planning. Let them eat
flakes.
A 13-serving box of
Kellog’s Sugar Frosted Flakes costs $18.70, or
about $1.45 a serving. Six ounces of milk
costs about 40 cents. So a bowl of cereal
costs $1.85, maybe more depending on the kind
of milk you use (low-fat, almond, skim). In
contrast, a chicken leg, mashed potatoes, and
green beans will run you about $2.50 a
serving, and it has more protein than the
cereal dinner, which may have as few as two
grams of protein. I am trying to figure out
what Pilnick was thinking or if he has any
children. His rather glib response to many
working families’ daily challenges was out of
line, out of order, and highly self-serving.
Sure, some families
occasionally do breakfast for dinner and even
have fun with it. But offering flakes is no
solution for families who are fighting
inflation. Pilnick has received appropriate
flack for his careless remarks, but those
remarks reflect how divided our nation is.
Some say, “Let them eat flakes,” while others
may not even be able to afford the flakes the
$4.9 million dollar-earning CEO so glibly
offers. Cereal prices have risen 27 percent in
the last four years, faster than other grocery
prices. Flakes are not a nutritious substitute
for a balanced meal; some are so laden with
sugar that they are a health risk. Frosted
flakes, for example, have 13 grams of sugar
per serving. Healthy? Hardly.
The COVID pandemic
sparked inflation-related challenges, and
those challenges, while decreasing, continue.
Wages have not risen as quickly as inflation
has, and those on the bottom are encountering
significant difficulties. Hunger is a national
problem that requires income supplements for
people experiencing poverty, like the child
tax credit. It certainly doesn’t need the glib
myopia of an intellectually challenged CEO who
perhaps thought he was being cute. His
solution, let them eat flakes, is no solution
for the already nutritionally threatened folk
on the bottom, especially those with children.
Gary Pilnick earns
more than $94,000 a week. He could donate some
of that to a food bank. Letting them eat
flakes is no solution to our nation’s hunger
situation. Forty-four million of us, including
one in five children, experience hunger. While
we brag about our international prowess, the
reality is that 12 countries – Finland,
Ireland, Norway, France, the Netherlands,
Japan, Sweden, Canada, the UK, Portugal,
Switzerland, and Austria do better at
providing citizens with nutritious meals.
Instead of offering flakes, Pilnick should
offer policy solutions. Or he should just shut
up.
