I, like may children of my Generation Xs, grew up eating cereal in the morning. Now that I know a few things about nutrition, although my parents had good intention, they where essentially feeding us junk food before a busy day.
Most Cereals marketing to kids these days…
I know most parents don’t look at cereal box ingredient lists because they still buy them for their children, believing that they are a healthy meal. Nothing could be further from the truth. The vast majority of cereals (not only by Kelloggs btw) have enough refined sugar, salt, processed flour, preservatives, artificial color and artificial flavors to make crap look appetizing. Read the label, for your kids sake as all this junk only leads to a very unproductive day, obesity and other health problems later in life… thank God most of us grow out of this habit!
Kelloggs Promise
Well, according to a ABC News article, Kelloggs has avoided a lawsuit by health advocates for their glorified junk food by promising not to promote it’s products to children under the age of 12 unless they meet the following standards
- No more than 200 calories per serving
- No trans fat and no more than 2 grams of saturated fat.
- No more than 230 milligrams of sodium, except for Eggo frozen waffles.
- No more than 12 grams of sugar, not counting sugar from fruit, dairy and vegetables.
Promises aren’t worth much
Serving sizes are already a joke of the food industry, I regularly eat 4-6 serving sizes in one serving when I do eat something pre-made (ei: oatmeal, yogurt, granola bars etc.), so this is an easy promise to keep by simply bringing serving sizes that much smaller. Parents will KEEP over-serving (by the producers definition) their products if they keep buying this stuff. Trans fats should NEVER be consumed at any age and saturated fats (based on serving size) is still not much of a compromise.
The FDAs recommended daily value for sodium is 2 400 mg FOR AN ADULT, the average child weighs about 1/3 of an adult so for a child, that amount drops to about 800 mg. I think it’s easy to feed your child two servings so you are giving almost the entire DAILY FDA recommended sodium in one meal… and I consider FDA in this instance to be high to begin with. I would have preferred they completely DROP refined white sugar and use xylitol or simply brown sugar. A caveat to all this is that it doesn’t start for another 6 months!
Kelloggs isn’t all bad
I will be the first to say that Kelloggs does produce some great healthy alternatives among with other food producers, the problem is they aren’t really marketing these to kids but to adults. I am not talking about Pop-Tarts, Froot Loops or Cheez-Its neither. I don’t understand this rational of feeding crap to kids but health to adults… the damage from years of malnutrition will take years to undo.
Alternatives?
Well, what ever happened to cooking eggs in the morning into an omelet with fresh vegetables? What about juicing fresh carrot juice or drinking some V8 if you don’t have much time? There are plenty of alternatives to the sugar laden cereal and they take just about the same amount of time to prepare. Yogurt is great along with oatmeal and even cream of wheat is great! Not only will this SAVE you money, most cereals are bloody expensive, but your children will have a very productive day. I am happy to report that organic cereals and those made which very healthy ingredients are also starting to fill up groceries but again, the kids never hear about them.
Deeper problem
If you think about it, how do most kids find out about these junk cereals anyways… well, you let them watch Saturday morning and after school cartoons right? I saw my nephew watch cartoons a few too many times and each commercial promotes a product that is less healthy then the last. I would prefer him playing video games then having access to television. Parents use the TV these days as a baby sitter, they are so busy that they have relegated their responsibilities to the media to educate their children and we see the consequences each day that yet another child is diagnosed with diabetes, obesity and a host of other ailments that could have been prevented. But that, my readers, is a discussion that merits its own headline.
The Bottom Line
Read labels and cook your own meals, that is the easiest way to avoid feeding your kids junk food masquerading as healthy meals.
References
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=3276491
http://www.fda.gov/fdac/foodlabel/sodium.html
I have used Oral-B electric toothbrushes for years now along with a waterjet irrigator that lasts but a few months a pop due to the salt I add to the water to kill bacteria. After a session of these two, my mouth is as sterile as an operating room!
Sleep means different things to different people. In business books, more often then not, sleep is seen as a waste of time while for hippies if you where awake longer then you where asleep then you had a bad day.
Recent Comments