Health & Fitness
Feeding your kids Kellogg's cereal for breakfast? May be worse than all the Halloween candy they could possibly consume.
Feeding your kids Kellogg's cereal for breakfast? May be worse than all the Halloween candy they could possibly consume.
Kellogg's cereal vs. Halloween candy
It’s the time of year when kids’ minds turn to costumes and candy. As a dentist I accept that kids are going to indulge to some extent during the Halloween season. While I could make this a post about warning you about watching how much your kids and you eat, I would rather talk about a much more nefarious source of sugar; Kellogg’s cereal. Eating candy for a few days out of the year is nothing compared to what some kids are consuming every day to start their day. Here is a recent study published by Environmental Working Group looking at 84 popular brands of cereal. Kellogg has 50% of the top 10 cereals in terms of sugar content. No.1 is Kellogg’s Honey Smacks, with 55.6 percent sugar by weight. Yes 55% of that cereal your kid or maybe you eat for breakfast is sugar. WOW! If you eat just one serving that is more sugar than a Twinkie. One serving is one cup. Have you ever poured a cup of cereal into a bowl? I doubt many people eat just one cup of cereal, as a bowl holds nearly 4 cups. Letting your kids have some candy for Halloween is one thing, but please rethink their breakfast if they are eating one of these Kellogg cereals.
“When I went to medical school in the 1960s, the consensus view was sugar provided ‘empty calories’ devoid of vitamins, minerals or fiber,” said health expert Dr. Andrew Weil. “Aside from that, it was not deemed harmful. But 50 years of nutrition research has confirmed that sugar is actually the single most health-destructive component of the standard American diet. The fact that a children's breakfast cereal is 56 percent sugar by weight – and many others are not far behind – should cause national outrage.”
“Cereal companies have spent fortunes on convincing parents that a kid’s breakfast means cereal, and that sugary cereals are fun, benign, and all kids will eat,” said noted NYU nutrition professor Marion Nestle. “The cereals on the EWG highest-sugar list are among the most profitable for their makers, who back up their investment with advertising budgets of $20 million a year or more. No public health agency has anywhere near the education budget equivalent to that spent on a single cereal. Kids should not be eating sugar for breakfast. They should be eating real food.”
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Based on percent sugar by weight 1.) Kellogg’s Honey Smacks 55.6% 2.) Post Golden Crisp 51.9% 3.) Kellogg’s Froot Loops Marshmallow 48.3% 4.) Quaker Oats Cap’n Crunch’s OOPS! All Berries 46.9% 5.) Quaker Oats Cap’n Crunch Original 44.4% 6.) Quaker Oats Oh!s 44.4% 7.) Kellogg’s Smorz 43.3% 8.) Kellogg’s Apple Jacks 42.9% 9.) Quaker Oats Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries 42.3% 10.) Kellogg’s Froot Loops Original 41.4%
Bryan Bauer, DDS, FAGD
630-665-5550
