Carl Pappenheim has a good time complaining about this graph on a box of Cheerios, which compares the effects that a bowl of Cheerios, a glucose drink, and a skipped breakfast have on you "power of concentration" over time.
First up, a glucose drink! The breakfast of champions! Who hasn't left the house of a morning, pausing only to swallow down a couple of cans of Tango or Lucozade? I'm reminded of Bill Bryson's "Rated FIRST against the Ford El Crappo for safety!" diatribe on advertising – if a glucose drink is the only competition then Cheerios can't be doing too well against anything more sensible. But wait! Sugary energy drinks aren't the only competition! The other condition is.. no breakfast! Which actually beats Cheerios in the first half hour! Clearly, the subjects were still mulling over the pseudo-scientific crap they'd just read on the Cheerios box and couldn't concentrate on… whatever it was they were given. In the end, of course Cheerios come out on top but it hardly tells you anything you didn't know before — as the only solid food in the experiment you might equally read the result as, "Cheerios – better for you than starvation."
