Sweet Dreams Cereal
postconsumerbrands.com
postconsumerbrands.com
That's _3 teaspoons_ of sugar you're eating before bed (and is 27% of your RDA, I hope you had nothing else sweet all day).
There's no diet where this is healthy for you.
What a crock of shit. There’s nothing curated about this. This type of marketing speak makes my ears bleed.
Whether they are actually doing this is a matter of their bottom line, and nowhere in their marketing copy does it mention any of these words.
Also, none of these cofactors will increase melatonin output long-term if one does not ingest enough B3 (niacin), L-tryptophan and either L-tyrosine or DL-phenylalanine.
In a diet deficient of those (think: anything grown using glyphosate) these additional metabolic cofactors might instead contribute to a catecholaminergic and adrenergic insufficiency, essentially running on fumes wrt one’s neurons.
This is how echo chambers are formed.
Which is very clever—it sounds significant, and yet very difficult to falsify.
I'd like to see the study that says no one (that is, 0.00% of the population) needs to eat much in the morning, let alone several hundred calories before lunch.
I wonder if the tallest person alive agrees? Or manual laborers who skip lunch? Or Jonas Scott, a man who has a damaged GI tract?
No medical or dietary benefit to "eating much of anything" before lunch? For anybody on the planet? Please think critically.
A few theories I have for why this is the case:
More carbs before bed increases muscle and liver glycogen (assuming your stores are not full. Mine usually are not since I typically work out in the evening) which requires water to store. Henceforth, carbs close to bed should lower chances that you have to get up to urinate during the night. Carbs also lower cortisol levels and thus may promote relaxation.
Amino acids in meat like tryptophan also create a feeling of sleepiness (post-Thanksgiving nap, anyone?).
Maybe there’s something to the whole “rest and digest” after all.
This is to say nothing in regards to the leagues of sleep research that clearly state you should not be eating before bed, especially this sugar bomb garbage.
- The American classic/stereotypical diet has a lot of sugar in breakfast foods. My experience is that starting the day with dessert (cereal, donuts) sets up a pretty bad sugar crash/energy roller coaster. I try to limit sweets and save them for as late as possible so that I’m not getting rebound hunger/crashes for the rest of the day. Repositioning cereal as a dessert style item might not be the disaster for human health that some other commenters suggest, especially if it carves a path out of the current business model.
https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6959843/
Speaking as an American, the reason we're here is because people have had too much sugar, fat, and salt shoved down their throats. From Kool Aid having over 50% of daily sugar per serving while being labeled as a good source of vitamin C. Lucky Charms touting iron and magnesium while also having an over abundance of sugar. Because companies like Post write shit like this:
"Sweet Dreams cereal is made with delicious and wholesome ingredients, a nighttime herbal blend of lavender and chamomile, and curated vitamins and minerals like Zinc, Folic Acid and B vitamins to support natural melatonin production. "
This is a dessert that's being sold as a health product. It's a piece of an ongoing problem. Yes there's people who can eat before bed, yay for them and their awesome bodies (or sad for them if they're those real but not at all the norm people who can't gain weight no matter how much they eat and wish they could bulk up), unhealthy eating is a problem and this stuff isn't helping.
Its where our breakfast, and a lot of our current Candy empires were born. (including the influence on frozen foods (Birds Eye).
We are funny and clever marketing people.
Yes, we can all Google Scholar REM sleep studies on various substances.
Christ, I don't want to be this character. And that's important.
Imagine Kristen Bell or Terry Crews Pez Dispensers, but for stoners.
That's the joke. The other mumbling was a response to the rightfully concerned diabetic and good sleep crowd. We know caffeine and other substances like sugar will disrupt sleep. We can just look it up on Google Scholar and be careful with our trustees.
Being the character... Well, I don't really want to be that person with that rebel "identity". But I fixed the other issues. I'm sorry you had to call it out.
So Post selling a sugary night cereal is just awesome. Good job MBAs.
I personally need to eat a bunch of carbs before bed the day after a heavy workout. That's when my muscles do most of their repair/growth, and if there aren't enough carbs to fuel that I wake up horribly sore.
But even if you're not working out, some people eat dinner really early like at 5 pm. They need a snack or even light meal before bed to fuel the body's everyday recovery at night. A moderate amount of cereal with milk is a pretty decent option here. Better than ice cream or chocolates for sure.
For some people, it definitely is true that eating close to bedtime leads to weight gain. But this is not even close to universal, different bodies process food differently. Other people need food to get them through the night and don't gain weight at all.
This is a bad product selling a bad habit: more sugar.
That can happen right before bedtime sometimes, because you didn't eat enough earlier.
So please don't say no one would benefit. Low blood sugar is a real issue for some people. Eating sugar simply brings it back to a baseline, and then starches will keep it there. And this can happen at any time of day.
Some people never need this. But different people are different.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6959843/
By all means if you have special dietary needs and you're aware of your need to consume sugar and carbs before bed, go for it. But in general, no, people are not benefiting from more sugar and especially not before sleep.
That's not speaking in general, that's being absolutist. That's why I was responding to your blanket statement.
But now we're on the same page, that people have different dietary needs.
People often tend to speak in absolutes when it comes up diet, and people can often feel judged by that, so I think it's important to always remember that there's a lot of diversity regarding the nutrition people need, which is why counterexamples can be important.
Then you should go back and re-read my comment about when there are times that this product's nutritional profile is exactly what you need.
I'm not being pedantic. I'm pushing back against you insisting that it's a product that can't be good for anyone ever. That kind of black-and-white thinking isn't helpful in general, and is often especially harmful when it comes to diet.
And please don't put words in my mouth. I never once brought up a "net good for the world" or whether its marketing is appropriate. Those aren't points I ever raised.