Weston Price does not seem to be a legitimate source of science-based nutrition advice, and while I’m not a fan of overly processed food, I’m not sure I can completely embrace the information you have cited about extruded cereal.

In his book Fighting the Food Giants, Paul Stitt has tells us that the extrusion process used for these cereals destroys most of the nutrients in the grains. It destroys the fatty acids; it even destroys the chemical vitamins that are added at the end. The amino acids are rendered very toxic by this process. The amino acid lysine, a crucial nutrient, is especially denatured by extrusion. This is how all the boxed cereals are made, even the ones sold in the health food stores. They are all made in the same way and mostly in the same factories. All dry cereals that come in boxes are extruded cereals.

http://www.westonaprice.org/modernfood/dirty-secrets.html

This post was mentioned on Twitter by marionnestle: Which cereals do companies push hardest? The sugary ones!: Kelly Brownell and his colleagues at the Rudd Center.. http://cli.gs/y0GLQ...

I think the difference is that we didn’t watch much TV. An hour of PBS nature stuff or Dr. Who in the evening and an hour of cartoons on Saturday. Secondly, my children were warned before entering a store that there would be zero tolerance for nagging (and then I had to remember to stick to it).

Still, in the absence of parenting, I’d like to see much tougher regulation of food products as well as advertising aimed at children, which seems to be the larger problem.