Which Cereal Is Better?

at 3:59 PM

This may come as a piece of shocking news but the cereal companies really don't give a hoot about your health, or how much sugar you are taking in per day!! Gasp!! My son asked me why the word 'fruit' was spelled wrong on 'Froot Loops'.  I told him that of course there is no fruit in Froot Loops and there are 'flavor labs' out there and all they do is to come up with chemicals that taste like, say, oranges or bananas.  While the fact that Froot Loops is not a healthy cereal at all and should be eaten for dessert may not surprise many of you, the science and art of picking a healthy cereal can be more challenging.

There are three things I look for when I choose a cereal:
1. fiber - I want it to be at least 3 or more grams of fiber per serving
2. sugar- the lower, the better.  It is very difficult to buy a box of cereal that has small amounts of sugar
3. protein- the more protein, the more satiated you will feel.

Take time to look at the nutritional information on the back of the cereal box and don't let the message: 'Same Product, New Look' fool you into buying anything.

On the rare occasion that I have cereal in the morning. (I like to mix a serving in plain yogurt and add a little splenda) I like to eat All Bran.  But my kids are not big fans of this cereal so I buy two different cereals and mix them for their breakfast.  Let's compare the two that I just bought recently.  Remember that serving size is really by weight and not by volume but because most people have a measuring cup and not a scale, serving size of foods is listed as volume and then weight is usually in the parenthesis and is much more accurate.  But both are estimates and not exact.

Which one is better? Frosted Mini-Wheats or Nature's Path Organic Flax Plus Granola?  Let's look at the calories first: 52 grams of the Mini-Wheats has 180 calories; whereas an equivalent amount of the granola cereal has 260 calories.  So for every serving (if you only have one serving) with the granola you are eating 80 calories more.  The granola cereal also has more fat.  However the fat is good fats coming from flax seed and pumpkin seeds.  The granola cereal has 10 grams vs. the one gram in Mini-Wheats.  Each cereal ha 5 grams of fiber per serving (not bad!).  Total carbohydrates in the Mini-wheats is 43 grams, while the granola cereal has 37. Mini-Wheats has 12 grams of sugar whereas the granola cereal has 10. (To me this is not too big of a difference.  The granola cereal has 6 grams of protein per serving and the Mini-Wheat has 4 grams.

So which one is better?  In my opinion they are about the same.  Both have added sugar, both are high in calories and both are OK in the fiber category (5gr). Which one is worse for you? Evaporated cane juice in the granola cereal or the high fructose corn syrup in the Mini-Wheats.  Although high fructose corn syrup has been linked with type II diabetes there is no real evidence that all our obesity problems will be solved if we refrain from it.

So I guess the bottom line is you can't just believe whatever it says on the cereal box.  Start reading the nutritional information and it will get easier to decipher the data.