Cereal Killers Amongst Us

Morning all,

So!  Have y’all heard about the oh-so-obvious fact that most kids cereals contain over 50% sugar?

Why the world is so surprised about this is truly beyond me.

To wit:

…Are you one of those adults who keep a box of Frosted Flakes or Froot Loops hidden in the cupboard? Such sugary cereals are heavily marketed to children, to the tune of about $229 million advertising dollars per year. But an estimated 58 percent of "children’s" cereals are consumed by the over-18 crowd.

Whether you’re shopping for actual or overgrown kids, we found four cereals with kid-focused marketing that scored Very Good in our new nutrition rating system, based on product label information. Cheerios, Kix, Honey Nut Cheerios (all General Mills), and Life (Quaker Oats) earned points for relatively lower sugar and higher dietary fiber, the two categories we weighed as most important. Cheerios topped the list with only 1 gram of sugar and a healthful 3 grams of fiber per serving.

The bad news is that 23 of the top 27 cereals marketed to children rated only Good or Fair for nutrition. There is at least as much sugar in a serving of Kellogg’s Honey Smacks and 10 other rated cereals as there is in a glazed doughnut from Dunkin’ Donuts. Two cereals, Kellogg’s Honey Smacks and Post Golden Crisp, are more than 50 percent sugar (by weight) and nine are at least 40 percent sugar…..MORE….

All together now – Duh!  As articles like this show:

• Kid Tested, Mother Approved
• Some children’s cereals are more than half sugar
• Sugar?! In kids’ cereals? I don’t believe it!
• Sugar IN kids cereals
• Sugar Cereals… or a Glimpse into my Childhood

I mean, let’s be serious.  Kids are NOT going to eat something just because "it’s good for them", ergo, the taste has to APPEAL to them.  And as most kids have the gourmet appreciation of a concrete brick thrown thru a skylight, "taste" generally has to equate to "sweet."

But!  If you use a zero-calorie sweetener, then the sugar industry interests lose profitability…and of course, we certainly cannot have that (nor can we impact the oil interests, or the fast food interests, or the ….).

Remember, in today’s society, money talks.  

This is yet another reason why cancer will never be cured – it’s such a huuuuge billion dollar industry, it would cause financial chaos if a cure truly was available.  Talk about being bad for business!

Anywhos, back to the topic at hand.  Breakfast and kids!  I’ll confess that for expediency’s sake, I do give my kids cereal every now and then (Honey Bunches of Making Money For Sugar Producers, to be exact).  But I am also moving them off towards scrambled eggs, breakfast sandwiches and the like as well!

There IS, however, another solution.

You’ve heard of breakfast bars, right?  Convenient, quick, easy to throw into a backpack….yet a weee bit expensive.

Did you know you can make your own?  And because it’s your own, you can play with the ingredients until YOU’RE the one who is happy with the taste results?  Sweeteners like Sweet Leaf liquid stevia (that come in to-die-for flavors like English Toffee, Apricot, Chocolate Raspberry and a whole slew of others) make the "sweet" factor irrelevant when you start to count calories.

Here are some resources for making your own breakfast bars:

• Breakfast Bar Recipes
• Make your own protein bars
• Muesli breakfast bars
• Protein Bar recipe thread

As you’ll see, they’re ‘way easy to make – some of them don’t even require baking! 

Yes, it really is important for kids to have a filling, healthy breakfast!  But you don’t have to rely upon the sugar industry to provide it.  The choice, of course, is yours.

Enjoy,

Barbara Ling

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