Sometimes, all you want is cereal.
I’m loving Rice Chex lately. It’s inexpensive, available at every grocery store I walk into (not just the fancy ones), is gluten-free, has a pretty short ingredient list, and only has two grams of sugar per serving. Also – I love that it doesn’t get instantly soggy in the milk! Soggy cereal is the worst.
It’s a pretty low-calorie cereal, so I end up eating 2 – 2.5 servings to have a proper breakfast. And I like to pump it up with nuts and fruit. Yum.
A few weeks ago, I stumbled on this report on the Environmental Working Group about the unhealthiest kids’ cereals. It was kind of a “duh†study – Wait, kids’ cereals are full of sugar?! You don’t say! – but interesting nevertheless. Honey Smacks is nearly 56% sugar by weight, and one cup of the cereal has more sugar in it than a Twinkie (for comparison, the government’s voluntary guidelines suggest kids’ cereals should have no more than 26% sugar by weight). In fact, one cup of the other 44 out of 84 cereals surveyed have more sugar than three Chips Ahoy! cookies. One of my all-time favorite kids’ cereals – Honey Oh!s – made the list of the top 10 worst cereals… Damn. According to the EWG, kids who eat a high-sugar breakfast have more problems at school, have less energy, make more mistakes on their school work, and ultimately feel hungrier by lunchtime than kids who ate a low sugar breakfast.
They’ve also got a list of the best and worst brands:
I like that they included big-brand cereals because, let’s face it, not everyone can afford or has access to fancy organic cereals like Nature’s Path.
Here are 7 Other Awesome Resources from the EWG (I especially love their sunscreen page).
What’s your favorite cereal (healthy or otherwise – sometimes, cereal makes a pretty awesome dessert)?
Thanks for posting that chart Caitlin! I think the only brand I’ve tried from the left column is Nature’s Path, and they’re one of my favourite companies. I’m going to have to investigate the others!