Friday, February 13, 2009

Paying attention to the small stuff

A former student writes to ask if this seems like an odd product placement for Special K in the New York Times' feature about efforts to recover the belongings of the passengers on the US Airways plane that landed safely in the Hudson River:
And Mr. Wentzell lost a box of Special K cereal that he travels with, for a lower-cholesterol breakfast than hotels usually provide.
Like any student of nutrition science and policy, my correspondent knows that almost no cereal contains dietary cholesterol, which is found only in animal foods.

Ironically, the moral of the article is, essentially, "how can one worry about the small stuff in the midst of great and important events?"

2 comments:

  1. I would assume that the hotel breakfasts referred to are the "continental breakfast" type which often feature croissants and other pastries that might be rich in butter, or hotel breakfast buffets which feature many more choices that would be higher in cholesterol. All of which is not to say that it is impossible to get cereal for breakfast at a hotel, but perhaps Mr. Wentzell packs his own to avoid the temptation of other offerings.

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  2. I didn't think it was a bad thing to include in the article - it gave it some varying perspectives - but the use of the brand name and a health claim seemed unnecessary. I wrote the author. This was his response:

    I included it to show the breadth of the items people thought about afterwards, when they'd gotten away with nothing but their lives.
    ---- Matt

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