Breakfast cereal sales declined for decades before Kellogg's sale to Italian company

Breakfast cereal could use a lucky charm.

U.S. sales of the colorfully packaged morning staple have been in a decades-long decline, a trend back in the spotlight with news that Italian confectioner Ferrero Group plans to purchase WK Kellogg, maker of Corn Flakes, Froot Loops, Rice Krispies and other familiar brands.

Except for a brief period during the coronavirus pandemic, when many workers were home and had time to sit down with a bowl of cereal and milk, sales of cold cereal have steadily fallen for at least 25 years, experts say.

In the 52 weeks ending July 3, 2021, Americans bought nearly 2.5 billion boxes of cereal, according to market research company Nielsen IQ. In the same period this year, the number was down more than 13% to 2.1 billion.

Cereal has been struggling for multiple reasons. The rise of more portable options like Nutri-Grain bars and Clif Bars – which both went on sale in the early 1990s – made it easier for consumers to grab breakfast on the go.

Concerns about food processing and sugar intake have also dimmed some consumers’ enthusiasm for cereals. One cup of Lucky Charms contains 24% of a consumer’s daily recommended intake of sugar, for example.

“Cereal finds it really hard to get out from underneath that,” said Tom Rees, global insight manager for staple foods at the consulting company Euromonitor. “It can't escape the fact that it doesn't look like a natural food. You have to create it and form it.”

Rees noted that for decades, cereal manufacturers focused on adding vitamins and minerals to build cereal's health credentials. But consumers now are looking for simplified ingredient lists.

Artificial dyes — like the petroleum-based colors that brighten Froot Loops — have also come under fire. Last fall, dozens of people rallied outside WK Kellogg's Battle Creek, Michigan, headquarters demanding that it remove artificial dyes from its cereals. Kellogg and General Mills — another major U.S. cereal maker — have since pledged to phase out artificial dyes.

Add to that, consumers are expanding their idea of what breakfast can be. Yogurt and shakes have replaced the traditional bacon and eggs. Kenton Barello, a vice president at the market research firm YouGov, said his polling shows that Generation Z consumers, who were born between 1997 and 2007, eat more vegetables for breakfast than other generations.

Barello said YouGov’s polling also shows that members of Gen Z are less likely to eat breakfast but still buy ready-to-eat cereal, suggesting they’re eating it as a snack or for other meals.

“With younger generations, there are differences in their relationship with food and these eating moments,” Barello said. “They are going about breakfast in a different way than Millennials, Gen X and Baby Boomers.”

Cereal's struggles are part of what led to the breakup of the Kellogg Company. In 2023, the century-old company that put Battle Creek, Michigan, on the map split into two companies. Kellanova took popular snack brands like Cheez-Its, Pringles and Pop-Tarts as well as international cereals, and WK Kellogg made cereals for the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean.

In 2024, M&M's maker Mars Inc. announced a plan to buy Kellanova for more than $30 billion. That plan has cleared U.S. regulators but is still awaiting regulatory approval in Europe. WK Kellogg was left to try to rejuvenate the cereal business.

The sale of WK Kellogg to Ferrero doesn't mean supermarket cereal aisles are at risk of extinction. Packaged food companies have options for turning around their soggy cereal sales, Rees said. He thinks Kellogg's Mashups line, which mixed brands like Frosted Flakes and Froot Loops into one box, appeal to younger consumers, who tend to like interesting flavor combinations.

The market may also have a fragmented future, according to Rees. Companies may have to accept that younger buyers want a sweet-and-spicy cereal while older buyers might want a Keto-friendly option.

“The future might be realizing that the era of ‘This brand will serve everybody’ isn't going to happen,” Rees said.

Julia Mills, a food analyst with the consulting company Mintel, thinks the shrinking population of children in the U.S. gives cereal makers the opportunity to shift to more sophisticated flavors and packaging. Cereal could be positioned as a fancy topping for yogurt, for example, or a fiber-rich food that can improve gut health.

Some niche cereal brands, like high-fiber Poop Like a Champion cereal and high-protein, zero-sugar Magic Spoon, are already doing that. But legacy brands say they shouldn't be counted out.

Jeffrey Harmening, the chairman and chief executive officer of Cheerios maker General Mills, said his company considered trying to acquire Magic Spoon. Instead, it made high-protein versions of Cheerios, which now outsells Magic Spoon.

“The key to longer term is, honestly, is giving consumers more of what they want,” Harmening said during a conference call with investors in March.

Boxes of Kellogg's breakfast cereal are seen at a super market, Friday, July 11, 2025, in Springfield, Pa. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)

Boxes of Kellogg's breakfast cereal are seen at a super market, Friday, July 11, 2025, in Springfield, Pa. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)

Kellogg's cereal products are shown at a grocery store in Richardson, Texas, Friday, July 11, 2025. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

Kellogg's cereal products are shown at a grocery store in Richardson, Texas, Friday, July 11, 2025. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

Kellogg's cereal products are shown at a grocery store in Richardson, Texas, Friday, July 11, 2025. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

A woman pushes a shopping cart past boxes of Kellogg's breakfast cereal at a supermarket, Friday, July 11, 2025, in Springfield, Pa. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)

Boxes of Kellogg's breakfast cereal are seen at a super market, Friday, July 11, 2025, in Springfield, Pa. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)

ATLANTA (AP) — Donald Trump would not be the first president to invoke the Insurrection Act, as he has threatened, so that he can send U.S. military forces to Minnesota.

But he'd be the only commander in chief to use the 19th-century law to send troops to quell protests that started because of federal officers the president already has sent to the area — one of whom shot and killed a U.S. citizen.

The law, which allows presidents to use the military domestically, has been invoked on more than two dozen occasions — but rarely since the 20th Century's Civil Rights Movement.

Federal forces typically are called to quell widespread violence that has broken out on the local level — before Washington's involvement and when local authorities ask for help. When presidents acted without local requests, it was usually to enforce the rights of individuals who were being threatened or not protected by state and local governments. A third scenario is an outright insurrection — like the Confederacy during the Civil War.

Experts in constitutional and military law say none of that clearly applies in Minneapolis.

“This would be a flagrant abuse of the Insurrection Act in a way that we've never seen,” said Joseph Nunn, an attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice's Liberty and National Security Program. “None of the criteria have been met.”

William Banks, a Syracuse University professor emeritus who has written extensively on the domestic use of the military, said the situation is “a historical outlier” because the violence Trump wants to end “is being created by the federal civilian officers” he sent there.

But he also cautioned Minnesota officials would have “a tough argument to win” in court, because the judiciary is hesitant to challenge “because the courts are typically going to defer to the president” on his military decisions.

Here is a look at the law, how it's been used and comparisons to Minneapolis.

George Washington signed the first version in 1792, authorizing him to mobilize state militias — National Guard forerunners — when “laws of the United States shall be opposed, or the execution thereof obstructed.”

He and John Adams used it to quash citizen uprisings against taxes, including liquor levies and property taxes that were deemed essential to the young republic's survival.

Congress expanded the law in 1807, restating presidential authority to counter “insurrection or obstruction” of laws. Nunn said the early statutes recognized a fundamental “Anglo-American tradition against military intervention in civilian affairs” except “as a tool of last resort.”

The president argues Minnesota officials and citizens are impeding U.S. law by protesting his agenda and the presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and Customs and Border Protection officers. Yet early statutes also defined circumstances for the law as unrest “too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course” of law enforcement.

There are between 2,000 and 3,000 federal authorities in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area, compared to Minneapolis, which has fewer than 600 police officers. Protesters' and bystanders' video, meanwhile, has shown violence initiated by federal officers, with the interactions growing more frequent since Renee Good was shot three times and killed.

“ICE has the legal authority to enforce federal immigration laws,” Nunn said. “But what they're doing is a sort of lawless, violent behavior” that goes beyond their legal function and “foments the situation” Trump wants to suppress.

“They can't intentionally create a crisis, then turn around to do a crackdown,” he said, adding that the Constitutional requirement for a president to “faithfully execute the laws” means Trump must wield his power, on immigration and the Insurrection Act, “in good faith.”

Courts have blocked some of Trump's efforts to deploy the National Guard, but he'd argue with the Insurrection Act that he does not need a state's permission to send troops.

That traces to President Abraham Lincoln, who held in 1861 that Southern states could not legitimately secede. So, he convinced Congress to give him express power to deploy U.S. troops, without asking, into Confederate states he contended were still in the Union. Quite literally, Lincoln used the act as a legal basis to fight the Civil War.

Nunn said situations beyond such a clear insurrection as the Confederacy still require a local request or another trigger that Congress added after the Civil War: protecting individual rights. Ulysses S. Grant used that provision to send troops to counter the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists who ignored the 14th and 15th amendments and civil rights statutes.

During post-war industrialization, violence erupted around strikes and expanding immigration — and governors sought help.

President Rutherford B. Hayes granted state requests during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 after striking workers, state forces and local police clashed, leading to dozens of deaths. Grover Cleveland granted a Washington state governor's request — at that time it was a U.S. territory — to help protect Chinese citizens who were being attacked by white rioters. President Woodrow Wilson sent troops to Colorado in 1914 amid a coal strike after workers were killed.

Federal troops helped diffuse each situation.

Banks stressed that the law then and now presumes that federal resources are needed only when state and local authorities are overwhelmed — and Minnesota leaders say their cities would be stable and safe if Trump's feds left.

As Grant had done, mid-20th century presidents used the act to counter white supremacists.

Franklin Roosevelt dispatched 6,000 troops to Detroit — more than double the U.S. forces in Minneapolis — after race riots that started with whites attacking Black residents. State officials asked for FDR's aid after riots escalated, in part, Nunn said, because white local law enforcement joined in violence against Black residents. Federal troops calmed the city after dozens of deaths, including 17 Black residents killed by local police.

Once the Civil Rights Movement began, presidents sent authorities to Southern states without requests or permission, because local authorities defied U.S. civil rights law and fomented violence themselves.

Dwight Eisenhower enforced integration at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas; John F. Kennedy sent troops to the University of Mississippi after riots over James Meredith's admission and then pre-emptively to ensure no violence upon George Wallace's “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door” to protest the University of Alabama's integration.

“There could have been significant loss of life from the rioters” in Mississippi, Nunn said.

Lyndon Johnson protected the 1965 Voting Rights March from Selma to Montgomery after Wallace's troopers attacked marchers' on their first peaceful attempt.

Johnson also sent troops to multiple U.S. cities in 1967 and 1968 after clashes between residents and police escalated. The same thing happened in Los Angeles in 1992, the last time the Insurrection Act was invoked.

Riots erupted after a jury failed to convict four white police officers of excessive use of force despite video showing them beating a Rodney King, a Black man. California Gov. Pete Wilson asked President George H.W. Bush for support.

Bush authorized about 4,000 troops — but after he had publicly expressed displeasure over the trial verdict. He promised to “restore order” yet directed the Justice Department to open a civil rights investigation, and two of the L.A. officers were later convicted in federal court.

President Donald Trump answers questions after signing a bill that returns whole milk to school cafeterias across the country, in the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)