General Mills Inc. Re-Launches Successful Lifestyle Web Site QueRicaVida.com With New Offerings, Useful Tools

MIAMI, May 20 /PRNewswire/ -- General Mills Inc. today unveiled a re-designed version of its successful, Spanish-language, lifestyle web site for women, QueRicaVida.com, at a Miami gala event attended by more than 100 Hispanic editors, reporters and bloggers from around the country. Several Latina celebrities, including actress Adamari Lopez, Despierta America! morning show host Karla Martinez, and Univision Network health spokesperson, Dra. Aliza, were also present for the unveiling, along with several hundred invited guests.

Event attendees were provided with an exclusive preview of the re-vamped site, which seeks to become the #1 food and lifestyle online resource for Latina moms. Among the site's numerous enhanced offerings will be regular health tips by Dra. Aliza, advice on parenting provided by Johnson & Johnson's Baby Center, information on education-related issues and hundreds of Hispanic-inspired recipes and money-saving coupons for numerous General Mills brands. A partnership with other major platforms such as AOL Latino, Univision: Cocina, Yahoo! En Espanol and MSN/Telemundo will further extend QueRicaVida.com's reach among Latina consumers.

The re-designed website will also facilitate navigation of its enhanced content, making it easier to explore and providing users with a more interactive experience. The new format will allow Latina consumers to rate and post opinions about the articles, videos and recipes they find in the site, as well as upload their own recipes, which will become a part of QueRicaVida.com's ample listing of meals.

According to Ursula Mejia-Melgar, General Mills Hispanic Marketing Manager and editor of Que Rica Vida, the magazine, "QueRicaVida.com aims to empower Latina moms and make their lives easier by providing them with information that can help resolve four key tension points in their lives – raising their children, tending to their illnesses and preventing them, making sure they don't fall behind at school and making the daily cooking experience easier and less stressful. I know, because I am a mother of two young children, myself."

"QueRicaVida.com has become indispensable for our Latina consumer," said Rodolfo Rodriguez, General Mills' Multicultural Marketing Director. "General Mills has invested resources to better understand and serve our Hispanic consumers, and the emotional link we have achieved with our audience has been an amazing result."

About General Mills

One of the world's leading food companies, General Mills operates in more than 100 countries and markets more than 100 consumer brands, including Cheerios, Haagen-Dazs, Nature Valley, Betty Crocker, Pillsbury, Green Giant, Old El Paso, Progresso, Cascadian Farm, Muir Glen, and more. Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, General Mills had fiscal 2009 global net sales of US$15.9 billion, including the company's $1.2 billion proportionate share of joint venture net sales.

About la Doctora Aliza

Dr. Aliza A. Lifshitz, Editor in Chief of VidaySalud.com, is a renowned physician, author and health reporter.  Dr. Lifshitz is the public face of the Univision television network's Peabody Award-winning health initiative Enterate: Salud es Vida.  She also appears on the network's Primer Impacto, the top rated Spanish-language television news magazine. El Consultorio de la Dra. Aliza, her live call-in program, airs weekly on the Univision Radio network.  Dr. Lifshitz writes regular monthly columns for People en Espanol and for Ser Padres.  Her weekly column in La Opinion is syndicated in Spanish-language newspapers throughout the country.  Her monthly column in the Vista bilingual supplement runs in 29 newspapers nationwide.

In addition to her activities in the media, Dr. Lifshitz maintains a full-time private practice in Internal Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and was President of the California Hispanic Medical Association an unprecedented four terms.

About BabyCenter®

BabyCenter® ( www.babycenter.com) is the leading global resource for parents, reaching 78 percent of new and expectant moms online in the United States, and 16 million parents monthly across 21 markets worldwide. BabyCenter® has nurtured more than 100 million parents since its launch in 1997 providing a customized experience that blends trusted expert advice with mom-to-mom wisdom from pre-conception through age eight. As the voice of modern motherhood, BabyCenter® is the go-to resource for 21st Century Mom™ insights.   Through its unique combination of content and community, BabyCenter® delivers award-winning stage-based content to parents via personalized home pages, e-mail newsletters, useful online and mobile tools, two popular parenting blogs (MomFormation™ and FameBaby®) and the BabyCenter Community, the fastest growing parenting community on the Web.  BabyCenter®  provides the most comprehensive, exclusive set of industry-leading 3D animated videos about pregnancy and birth while also housing a series of complete live birth videos with expert narration and commentary. Through its proprietary research and industry-leading mom panels, BabyCenter® has helped some of the world's leading brands better understand how to market to moms.  BabyCenter® has garnered numerous prestigious awards, including six Webby Awards, two Mediapost OMMA Awards and was listed on Advertising Age's 2008 "Digital A-List." BabyCenter® is available on the Internet in eight languages and has mobile applications available in English, Spanish and Hindi. BABYCENTER, LLC is based in San Francisco, California, and is a member of the Johnson & Johnson family of companies. BabyCenter® is a registered trademark of BABYCENTER, LLC.

SOURCE General Mills