Let them eat Flakes: Kellogg’s CEO says poor families should consider ‘cereal for dinner’

Multimillionaire Gary Pilnick was excoriated on the internet, especially as cereal prices have risen 28% over the last four years

The multimillionaire chief executive officer of the US food processing giant Kellogg’s has drawn scorn from some quarters after recently suggesting that families with strained finances could cope by eating “cereal for dinner”.

Gary Pilnick was speaking live on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street on 21 February when he delivered the remarks in question, which some have compared to the “let them eat cake” phrase frequently attributed without evidence to Marie Antoinette prior to her execution during the French Revolution.