One fateful day when Anthony Sclafani, now the director of the Feeding Behavior and Nutrition Laboratory at Brooklyn College, was a graduate student, he happened to place a rat onto a lab bench where a fellow student had left a bowl of Froot Loops cereal. The rat waddled over and began to eat it heartily. This was surprising because rats are typically cautious with unfamiliar foods. Watching the rat greedily devouring human food, it occurred to Sclafani that foods marketed for people might be more fattening than the high-fat rodent chow he was currently using.
