The World’s Worst Cereals

Source: www.flickr.com/photos/wafflewhiffer/924700200/

Some breakfast cereals currently being marketed to U.S. children are more than half sugar by weight, according to Consumer Reports.

A single serving of 11 popular cereals, including Kellogg’s Honey Smacks, can carry as much sugar as a glazed doughnut. And some brands have even more sugar and sodium when formulated for the U.S. market than the same brands have when sold in other countries.

Post’s Golden Crisp and Kellogg’s Honey Smacks are both more than 50 percent sugar by weight, while nine brands are at least 40 percent sugar.

• Consumer Reports October 1, 2008

Unfortunately breakfast is typically one of the worst meals to eat out. Most restaurant options are simply not consistent with a healthy meal. The most notorious offenders though are probably breakfast cereals, which were initially developed to increase convenience, and now have mostly morphed into highly processed packages filled with synthetic vitamins and are a mere fantasy of a healthy food.

Breakfast cereals, along with waffles, pancakes, bagels and other high-carb, high-sugar foods, are some of your absolute worst breakfast options. And cereals that are aggressively marketed to kids have the worst nutritional quality of all cereals, according to an analysis of 161 brands earlier this year.

The analysis, published in the Journal of American Dietetic Association, found that children’s cereals have more sugar, sodium, carbohydrates, and calories per gram than cereals not marketed to kids. They also have less protein and fiber.

On average, sugar accounts for more than one-third of the weight of children‘s cereals compared to less than one-quarter of adult cereals.

The food industry spends about $229 million annually advertising these nutritionally void cereals to children. Colorful cartoons and other cheery tricks are meant to stimulate your child into wanting these “fun” foods, but the damage they can do to your child’s health is no laughing matter.

Obesity has become a major concern for American children, with excess sugar and carbohydrates being two of the major culprits contributing to this growing problem.

In the last two decades, the prevalence of overweight adolescents has nearly tripled, and current statistics show 16 percent of children are overweight or obese.

Sugar is Not a Healthy Breakfast, Fiber is Ignored!

There are two major problems with breakfast cereals:

1. Their high sugar content
2. The refined grains (carbohydrates, which also break down into sugar)

On average, just one serving of a typical children’s breakfast cereal equates to more than 90 percent of the daily sugar intake for sedentary girls aged 9 to 13.

In fact, “feeding infants cereal may be associated with an increased risk of developing type-1 diabetes mellitus autoantibodies, according to a study.

Children at an increased risk of type 1 diabetes who were fed cereals between the ages of 0 and 3 months and at age 7 months or older had an increased risk of developing type 1 diabetes later in life.

The results suggest that exposing susceptible children to cereal during certain ages increases their risk of type 1 diabetes.”

• Journal of the American Medical Association October 1, 2003;290(13):1713-20

Regardless of the “healthy fiber” content of the cereal, consuming that much sugar is not going to promote good health. Foods high in added sugar contain little in terms of essential vitamins and minerals, and the calories they contain are not made up of important micronutrients needed for health and growth.

Reducing sugar intake should be on the top of your list regardless of whether your child is currently overweight or not, because it’s been proven over and over that sugar increases insulin levels, which can lead to:

• • High blood pressure and high cholesterol
  • Heart disease
  • Diabetes
  • Weight gain
  • Premature aging, and more

Be Radical, but Not Unreasonable, About Sugar Elimination

Now, I understand that completely eliminating sugar from your child’s diet is probably not feasible, so don’t beat yourself up too much. While high sugar consumption will clearly have a negative impact on your child’s health, eating sugar in moderation is likely not going to cause any significant damage.

Moderate sugar consumption would be somewhere in the neighborhood of five pounds per year, or just over 6 grams per day, which is considerably less than the U.S. average, which is closer to a staggering 175 pounds per year (about 52 teaspoons a day)!

To accomplish this, taking a close look at the sugar content of your child’s cereal, which is consumed on a daily basis, is therefore necessary.

Just how much sugar are you feeding your child each day?

One 2005 study that analyzed the daily sugar intake of 5,000 toddlers ranging in age from 2 to 5, found that, on average, 2- to 3-year olds consumed around 14 teaspoons (~58 grams) of added sugar a day. This number jumped to 17 teaspoons (~71 grams) daily among 4- to 5-year olds (Journal of Pediatrics January 2005;146(1):105-11).

That’s clearly too much!

Striving to limit your child’s added sugar consumption to between 1.5 and 2 teaspoons (6-8 grams) per day will likely save them lots of health problems later on.

• Mercola News 10.01.08

Mental Health: Food For The Brain

Many typify good health from the neck down. But it hardly needs to be spelled out that eating too much junk food is not only bad for the way our bodies look, but also how our brain works.

 The ticket to health, happiness and clear thinking is applying those laws which regulate how our mind operates. None of the principles involved are rocket science. Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling said: “It is now recognized by leading workers in the field that behaviour is determined by the functioning of the brain, and that the functioning of the brain is dependent on its composition and its structure” (The Crazy Makers, page 39).

Edward Lee Thorndike, of Columbia University, says that “thinking is as biological as digestion” (ibid., page 47). These scientists recognize that the physical state of our brain affects our thinking.                                                       

You are what you eat!

Food for the masses no longer comes from the ground and for many, there is seldom a home cooked meal. And even “home-cooking” has been re-defined to include Hamburger Helper, canned vegetables and processed meats. And what’s left out are fresh fruits and vegetables, beneficial fats from nuts and fish (the brain is 60% fat), quality proteins such as lean meats and water.

The World Health Organization claims that mental health problems “are fast becoming the number-one health issue of the 21st century”. Clinical depression is the biggest international health threat after heart disease. And many studies now point to junk food increasing the occurrence of other mental ailments such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Too many people believe ill health and disease happen by chance. But studies show that nine out 10 people eat less than the recommended daily amounts of essential nutrients. They’re not called essential for nothing. When this is combined with other factors such as high homocysteine levels, which leave one twice as likely to succumb to depression, blood-sugar and neurotransmitter imbalances, it is hardly startling that people’s brain chemistry goes awry. There are definitive laws that regulate the workings of the body and these are as undeniable as gravity.

It’s yet another case of garbage in, garbage out. Whenever you eat from a can, a package or a box, food technology not only denies you essential nutrients, but it also gives you the added burden of unwanted elements. Everything we eat seems to have the stamp of ill health: irradiation, sterilization, pasteurization, over-processing, biotechnology, agricultural superbugs, overcrowded farm pens and unhealthy animal feeds, added chemicals, preservatives, sugars and harmful fats, pesticides, herbicides, steroids, hormones, and a lack of enzymes, fibre and nutrients.

Meanwhile, there is a growing interest in an orthomolecular, or nutritional approach to mental health problems. Food as medicine is not a revelatory proposition – it was the hobbyhorse of Hippocrates, the father of western medicine.

Believe it or not, what you eat becomes your brain and your body. The proteins, carbohydrates, fats, fibre, water and nutrients you ingest from wholesome foods impacts the functioning of the brain. Obviously, the nutritional value of your diet is then an important aspect to consider.

Blood sugar and the brain

Aside from nutritional deficiencies, another important key to understanding the link between eating processed foods and mood lies in understanding how blood sugar-levels affect the brain. The brain is the organ most sensitive to a change in blood [sugar] level – too little produces fatigue, confusion, irritability and aggression, while too much may result in loss of consciousness.

Processed foods like refined sugars and flours can send blood sugar levels on a roller coaster ride throughout the day, resulting in emotional ups and downs and possibly a dependence on such foods. The immediate effect on blood sugar levels after consumption is almost drug-like and temporarily lifts the moods.

Denial of cause is a growing trend in modern society, followed by shock at the occurrence of disease. The solution is to eat whole foods to feed the brain. Our physical body is not separate from our mind. If we disconnect the two, it becomes easy to think that diet plays no role in mental health. But it does, as a contributing factor. Contrary to what most assume, mental illness is not all psychological, but also physiological.

Whole foods, as close to their natural state as possible allow optimum capacity to think, reason and make decisions. Learn to apply these health principles to keep your mind sharp.