Breakfast cereal is in long-term decline
wsj.com
wsj.com
In France, there is something called the "nutriscore". It is a score between A and F that has to be prominently displayed on the packaging of products. It indicates how this product compares with others in the same kind of category on a healthy related scale. Industrial breakfast cereals are very bad. Easily D or E.
It’s not a global thing that tries to tell you which foods you should be eating
You don't have to use a tool available to you if you don't like it.
I think no one would _really_ object to labelling like oatmeal healthier than chips. The issue would be along the thresholds, when a product gets a B and its competitor gets an A. I can see wanting to dispute that decision, or claims of corruption to skew the ratings in favor of certain companies etc.
> The food contains less than 0.5 g of sugars, as defined in § 101.9(c)(6)(ii), per reference amount customarily consumed and per labeled serving or, in the case of a meal product or main dish product, less than 0.5 g of sugars per labeled serving; and
>(ii) The food contains no ingredient that is a sugar or that is generally understood by consumers to contain sugars unless the listing of the ingredient in the ingredient statement is followed by an asterisk that refers to the statement below the list of ingredients, which states "adds a trivial amount of sugar," "adds a negligible amount of sugar," or "adds a dietarily insignificant amount of sugar;" and
https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/cfr...
First, you can't add sugar, it has to be sugars that naturally occur in the other ingredients, but not ingredients that people know contain sugar like fruit, and second products don't have as much leeway as you think in defining their serving size. The FDA actually spells out what kinds of food get what serving size which is why you never see 1 chip / serving.
The goal isn’t to fool everyone all the time, it’s to fool people who are only looking at the label or are skimming the ingredients list etc.
What do you mean? Do you dislike its taste? I enjoy its taste, although I usually just drink water with my meals.
Unfortunately this isn't how this works. Products compete in their own category, so you can have frozen pizza's with an A and fruit with an E
Pizza producers can game the system somewhat, however, by adding ingredients that are counted positive (like protein or fiber) to partially offset "negative" ingredients such as sugar or saturated fats.
Dairy lobbying has led to cheese as a separate category and that milk is counted as food, rather than drink.
From Wikipedia:
> The system relies on the computation of a nutrient profiling system derived from the United Kingdom Food Standards Agency nutrient profiling system (FSA score). It was created by Santé Publique France, the French public health agency, based on the work of Serge Hercberg from Sorbonne Paris North University. Other bodies involved in the development of the system included the Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety (ANSES) and the High Council for Public Health (HCSP).
Your thesis that providing nutritional information to the public would result in industry pushback would suggest that govt cares more about corporate profits than public health.
Alas I agree with you. One feels that providing nutritional information to American consumers would be easily trumped by money.
I'm not sure such an "obvious" conclusion is necessarily a good sign of effective government.
Chip manufacturers certainly would (and do). They pay money to politicians to keep these regulations away, and they pay money to media to stir up a counter-movement against these ideas.
- no reasonable person would be against this
- capitalists are successful, so they must be reasonable
- capitalists are against this
=> they must be against this for good reasons, since they are reasonable
(If you are going to label something an F, why sell it?)
They also still seem to try to get bad practices banned.
For instance, I recently saw a sign explaining all the different types of fruit “wax” in their produce section.
Apparently it is legal and common practice to coat fruit with melted plastic in the US now, they aren’t able to source plastic-free fruit, and the only effective way to remove it is to throw away the peel.
I’m hoping a direct competitor to them with higher standards pops up, triggering an arms race.
The advantage of 3rd party evaluation is that when you don't like the score they gave you, you can easily create your own "independent" evaluation company that will rate all your products A+. At the end of the day, every product of every major company will be A+, each rated by a different evaluator.
Fiber is a carbohydrate the body can’t digest so you can generally subtract them when figuring, but beyond that carbohydrates alone are just sugar as far as your body is concerned.
Also, all sugars are carbs but all carbs aren't sugar. Don't take shortcuts.
No, but most people shouldn’t be consuming it as a ritual.
But, I will also add that in the primary school we had to learn how to balance a diet over a full week. Because you cannot balance on a single day...
And musli isn't processed as much as other breakfast cereals. We don't know what causes it yet, but there's a clear correlation between eating highly processed foods and obesity.
Muesli formula: 4 cups grains + 1 1/2 cups nuts/seeds + 1/2 cup dried fruit
Grains: Rolled oats, wheat bran, whole rye, whole barley, sorghum flakes, quinoa flakes, millet puffs, millet flakes.
Nuts/seeds: Sliced almonds, walnuts, cashews, pecans, pistachios, hazelnuts, sunflower seeds, pepitas, chia seeds, poppy seeds, sesame seeds, unsweetened coconut flakes.
Dried fruit: Dried apricots, dried cherries, dried figs, raisins, golden raisins, currants, apple chips.
I buy the grains and cook them in an air fryer. Takes about 5 minutes prep and 20 for cooking, then expand them in a tray for cooling. I don’t use dried fruits though
They generally also carry have options that aren’t just crunchy candy, but be prepared to read a lot of nutrition labels before you find one.
[1] https://www.bobsredmill.com/old-country-style-muesli.html
[2] https://www.whatsgoodattraderjoes.com/2021/01/trader-joes-mu...
https://stopandshop.com/product-search/granola%20&%20muesli?...
"Bob's Red Mill" is a high end mill that also has a Muesli product in the US that is very good. Wholefoods carries them but your local chain may too (eg HEB does).
You may also have a store brand!
It'll be with the actual cereals like oats, not the sugary boxed stuff usually.
Your recipe looks nice, but some dried fruit has a bunch of added sugars, so that's something to keep an eye on though.
You can find it in Aldi, Lidl, Walmart, or Sprouts.
Thanks for the recipe, though.
Which is a really weird thing to eat for breakfast.
Here, the cheapest kind: https://www.carrefour.fr/p/cereales-flocons-d-avoine-carrefo...
Muesli is a mixture which contains CEREALS (e.g. oats, wheat, barley) dried FRUIT (e.g. sultanas, raisins, dates) and NUTS (e.g. almonds, hazelnuts).
Here’s an example of a typical British muesli… https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jordans-Natural-Muesli-Kg-Pack/dp/B...
And here’s the Wikipedia entry… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muesli
The Nutriscore is a partial indicator, e.g. it doesn't mention how processed something is. But I find it a valuable tool to quickly discard many options from the supermarket.
Recently got some Carrefour bio (organic) cereals, some mixed with various seeds and another one mix of cereals, both with A Nutriscore and no processing or added sugar.
As with all cereals, the energy value is always around 350-400kCal/100g, but they contain very low actual sugar (15% for one, still quite high probably because of the dried fruits -I'll need to chose better next time- and 1% for the other).
Typical breakfast cereals will be between 25% to 50%+ sugar content (wtf...).
https://www.lebensmittelklarheit.de/fragen-antworten/nutri-s...
My main issue with them is that Kelloggs uses glyphosate (round up) as a drying agent at harvest time.
If I could find an organic version, I might buy them again.
I have heard this levied against the government before as having caused the obesity epidemic, but I really can’t imagine someone who sitting around deciding “I have to eat more bread, the government’s pyramid drawing demands it” rather than just eating what they want to eat.
I grew up in the same period, they showed us the pyramid in school and I literally never gave it a second thought.
Have they improved at all? Minnesota passed free school lunch for all, and my daughter will be starting school in a few years. Packing her a healthy lunch literally becomes the more expensive option.
The other problem is that if kids aren’t used to eating vegetables at home they might not eat them at school, and the schools don’t want to deal with increased waste / throwing.
Even in the UK in the 1980s, at the height of ghoulish neoliberal Thatcherism, there was a major controversy when she tried to stop giving free milk to kids in school (milk-snatcher they called her).
It derails where parents serve yoghurt drinks to babies (have seen that) or when they get accustomed to open the fridge for a drink (seen that also).
I bet government food recommendations was just the starting point, and concerns about cost and getting kids to actually eat it would have transformed any plan into something similar. Calories processed into pure forms (sugar and fat) are cheap. Grains are super cheap, which was a big part of why they were the backbone of dietary recommendations for so long - no use instructing people to eat something they can't afford.
Buying decisions from parents was influenced. Advertising influenced people. School lunches. What parents would feed other kids after activities. Habits of people "never giving it a second thought" were still being shaped by these forces. Even if someone only thinks about it a fraction of the time, it moves the needle. If my mom ate 10% more processed carbs than her parents and passed those habits to me, I was impacted. Rinse Repeat for 60 years.
Actually, to a shocking degree, yes.
I grew up in an immigrant family, so my parents were far too busy working to do non-mainstream research on diet. I grew up eating 2+ bowls of white rice, another serving of vegetables, and a small serving of meat for most meals. This was me "trying to be healthy" given the mainstream knowledge at the time.
If your parents aren't well-off enough to do dedicated research into the optimal diet for their children (which describes most of American parents), then you'll follow the advertised government guidelines.
Cereal… not so great.
The main problem is the processing, not the underlying grain ;)
rice crispies, and puffed rice in the 5 gallon bag [next to the puffed wheat]
I mean, except for the white rice (which should always be whole, like all grains in your diet) this seems like a good diet. Of course it all depends on how much stuff you were given to eat, but there is nothing wrong with this
It matters a lot, especially if it's a main part of your diet.
And getting the majority of your calories from grains of any type is in no way a "good diet". That myth needs to die.
Every dietitian tells you to vary your diet as much as possible. Your reply is moot because you are blindly considering 1 argument at a time while the guidelines paint a whole picture
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/12/13/whats-on-...
> he or she also consumes 36 pounds of cooking oils – more than three times as much as in the early 1970s.
> Broadly speaking, we eat a lot more than we used to: The average American consumed 2,481 calories a day in 2010, about 23% more than in 1970.
If it's not like that, probably other factors were a lot more important than the food pyramid.
And even if a huge number of Americans did robotically follow it that would not explain the obesity epidemic, because the obesity epidemic is worldwide.
But many countries that had a similar food pyramid are relatively thin, and some countries that are very obese never had one, so you're right that it's a poor explanation
Most breakfast cereals have tons of sugars added. The top part of the food pyramid—the smallest area—is for foods with added sugars. The food pyramid never justified eating a few bowls of Cap’n Crunch for breakfast, though that seems to basically be what people accuse it of.
The top layer was "Fats, Oils, & Sweets" and had some white and yellow spots.
Maybe it wasn't supposed to be justifying that, but as an infographic that's what it was suggesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_pyramid_(nutrition)
Telling people they should be having a lot of cereal and showing them a bowl of cereal (along with saltine crackers) is going to lead them to believe that's healthy. Especially in the 90's when "cereal" for almost everyone meant highly processed breakfast cereals with a lot of added sugars, and there was little awareness with how much sugar was being added to everything.
Telling people to eat a lot of whole grains is entirely different from telling people to eat a lot of, quote: "bread, cereal, rice and pasta."
I think it's because
1. Diet fads can be extremely lucrative
2. Stuff you put into your body touches on topics of purity and cleanliness, which have always been a big deal to us. Many religions have strong opinions on it, but it probably predates them.
3. Large interest groups do in fact organize to push their products as healthy, or at least less unhealthy. So there is some "conspiracy", both for and against carbs (and protein, and whatever).
Maybe instead of trying to spread your meme of "government always bad", you try to take on the European meme of "government needs to be good or everything goes to hell"?
In terms of Europe, the level of corruption and competence seems to be highly variable depending on the country. So again it seems misplaced to make a broad assertion like the one you made.
Before anyone tries anything funny I'm neither American, nor Western European, nor Protestant.
It's entirely possible that the US would've also succeeded had it opened its doors to millions of East Asian immigrants, but that didn't happen.
You need the initial immigrants to do the heavy lifting, plus they majorly control politics.
Mass Chinese migration to the US only really began after the Civil War, and was quickly locked down with the Chinese Exclusion Act [0] only a few decades after the doors were "opened". Even then, naturalization of Chinese citizens as US citizens was still restricted. There even had to be a Supreme Court case to establish that the children of Chinese immigrants born in the US were US citizens! [1]
The Chinese Exclusion Act was only repealed in 1943, when a small number (literally hundreds, almost nothing) of Chinese migrants were allowed in, with that increasing slowly over time.
Even today, Chinese and Indian (and others, but the impact is greatest for high population countries) migration is limited by the H1B cap and multi-decade green card queues. If the queue to get a green card is so long that you'll die first [2], you have effectively been banned from permanent residency and naturalization.
My point is simple: doors were open to European migrants, so European migrants built the US and formed its national character. Other methods and types of migration may have also worked to build the US, but we'll never know because the US restricted them heavily and still does.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Wong_Kim_Ark
[2]: https://www.wionews.com/india-news/more-than-400000-indians-...
And FDR interned 110,000 Japanese Americans in WW2. My dad who lived in Long Beach at the time said much of this was motivated by envy, as the Japanese Americans ran prosperous farms and businesses.
Any other settlers of the same kind would have succeeded. As a counterexample Spanish and Portuguese settlers largely failed to establish similar societies.
Countries with unfree economies, like South American ones, do poorly. Chile seems to go back and forth between free markets and socialism, with the consequential ups and downs of its economy.
The more free market an economy, the better it does. The more communist it is, the worse it does.
I have no love for nominally Communist States - they're authoritarian centralised party states a gnats arse or less from full dictatorships perpetrating the lie that they're on the path toward some socialist | communist goal - but they are all far away removed from such things.
The playbook for a succesful free market economy is to use protectionism at home and (if applicable: if the state can be called imperialistic) impose free market principles on subject nations so that domestic corporations can exploit them.
Look at South Korea for an example of a country that was built with protectionist capitalism.
> People of all backgrounds thrive in a free market economy.
Look at the Gini coefficient of the US.
> The proof of that is many countries have switched to free markets, and promptly started thriving.
Not Russia.
> Countries with unfree economies, like South American ones, do poorly. Chile seems to go back and forth between free markets and socialism, with the consequential ups and downs of its economy.
Chile had a coup in 1973 which removed the social democratic leader from power and installed a neoliberal government. Neoliberalism is the modern free market incarnation. Why didn't they thrive?
Nope. Protectionism hurts the economy because it is an impediment to free trade.
> South Korea for an example of a country that was built with protectionist capitalism.
Protectionism hurts the economy, but not enough to sink it. Free markets are remarkably resilient to damage.
> Not Russia.
Russia's economy is a kleptocracy.
> Chile
Installing a neoliberal government doesn't mean they actually instituted a free market. Chile has, as I said, gone back and forth between free markets and socialism. The country would get on its feet with the free markets, then switch back to socialism until it was on its knees again.
https://www.cato.org/cato-journal/fall-2020/fall-chile#expla...
That's a long-winded way to say Settler Colonialism.
In any case you can cherry-pick any variable you want when talking about such disparate nations.
> "ambitious, motivated, solid work ethic, respect for education and legitimate entreprise".
Spanish and Portuguese settlers, for reasons that are beyond me, didn't manage to create societies where these values are at their core.
We have done that in the federal political sphere for quite a while. The last vestiges of actually doing political right for the moral principle was probably back in the 80s or 90s.
There is a lot of corruption in the backwaters, and again at the high levels of large city government, but in general in the civil service there isn't corruption.
Likewise the military is still relatively uncorrupt in its administration, outside of the outlandish contracts of the military industrial complex.
It's probably because functionally speaking the "elite" capture most of the corruption money at the highest levels, and won't tolerate the inefficiency of low level corruption.
We don't get it because we expect it. We get it because history repeats.
Which is why we setup ours to be limited in power and why, as time goes on and that power expands, it gets worse and worse and why stuff like POTUS elections are now life and death when they used to be largely figure heads.
I met friends there looking for any possible way to come to Canada or the US largely to escape the systematic corruption which exists in some Balkan countries.
Would anybody move from Serbia to USA/Canada if they where equally wealthy? What if Serbia was even wealthier but still more corrupt?
It works the same in every country, from Japan to Russia to Germany to the USA to Venezuela.
It's the principal-agent problem, writ large.
I live in both the US and Germany (roughly 50/50) and the level of corruption is about the same in both places.
A lot of it is so ingrained in the culture you don't register it anymore. It gets automatically filed under "the way things work here" and becomes relatively invisible.
That is not quite true. Historically, the quality of both government and corruption varied ... and goverments worldwide also did quite a lot of good.
The "all of government is always bad" is pure ideological flex.
If that weren't true, you could show me a large, industrialized country that has very low governmental corruption. You can't. There aren't any.
That being said, in general corruption in western countries is massively lower then elsewhere. They actually function well with low levels of corruption in general.
The big corruption tend to be on the east.
The corruption in western nations is more sophisticated, and is better at hiding in plain sight. The type in the east is more furtive, probably out of an effort to "save face".
They differ in style, but not degree.
Over here we call it special euphemisms like "lobbying" and "regulatory capture" instead of "bribery" and "kickbacks". It makes people regard it differently, giving it an air of respectability.
Given the size of the corruption industry in the US, this was inevitable, as it would need a surface level of legitimacy to be able to attract and employ the sheer numbers of people who operate the machinery of the flows of bribery money from industry to servile lawmakers.
Why do you think there are so few major retailers in the US? Media companies? ISPs? Insurance companies? Hospitals? Health care networks? Pharmacies? Pharmaceutical companies? Grocery stores? Food manufacturers? Banks?
It's not lack of supply or lack of demand. Many people wish to manufacture cheap insulin or build better ISPs or more cheap surgery clinics or better grocery stores.
Soon it will be the same with social networks. They already achieved it with app stores, which is the only meaningful publishing today, apps having killed the web.
Anything that has broad social appeal or need which subsequently results in large recurring cash flows will get regulated upon so that the cash doesn't flow to anyone the existing power structure doesn't want to enrich. (I have a separate theory that the current anti-Musk backlash is engineered because of an accidental failure of the system implementing this longstanding policy, due to the double whammy of unexpected breakout success of both Tesla stock and SpaceX operational scaling simultaneously. He sure is lucky he has a US passport whilst trying to do what he's doing.)
People like to ascribe this to "late stage capitalism" but for every dysfunctional industry lacking real competition or consumer choice, I can point to a bad set of laws or regulations paid for by that industry. It's a failure of the state to do its job to protect end users and opportunity and liberty.
When copyright was about to expire, Disney went to the legislature with checkbook in hand. Laws are for sale in the USA.
Why does the illusion of consumer choice become more and more farcical every year?
The US regulatory machine is totally corrupt in almost everything it touches. We just reclassified it so it seems less shady than it is, but the story of Comcast and the FCC stands clear as just one of many illustrations.
(Or Bell in Canada, or DTAG in Germany. It works the same everywhere.)
Because free markets don't actually stop the accumulation of private market power. The natural state of most markets is monopoly or oligopoly due to efficiencies of scale and collusion. Governments at least provide some degree of legal oversight to this private power.
All of the large incumbents in those industries in western countries are protected by laws paid for, engineered, and often literally written by those industries. Places where this is not the case are the exception, not the rule.
The monopolies are held in place by government license or other regulations used to suppress competition. It's not a natural state.
Orders of magnitude differences in corruption matters a lot.
Like rent control.
If you want to blame government for lack of regulation in terms of proliferation of unhealthy food over the years, ok that I get. When they issue guidelines (pyramid) and people just completely misinterpret/ignore it, that’s people shooting their feet.
My critique is that instead of poking wholes in it, debating if eggs are or are not healthy and such, we really just normalized massive portions and fried/fast food/soft drinks/sugar in everything/etc. Which completely misses the spirit of what the pyramid was even aspiring to be. We didn’t even consider the pyramid when we made our food choices. We just allowed our gluttony to lead us where it may. That’s nobody’s fault but our own. We knew very well we were making poor choices along the way, but gave in to our desires. (Using “we” as collective US generalization, not trying to speak about anyone specifically, I’m sure someone here has a counterpoint but the obesity stats represent us collectively )
https://myplate-prod.azureedge.us/sites/default/files/2020-1...
(The poster sounds like they are in France, though.)
Raw Oats? https://reedir.arsnet.usda.gov/codesearchwebapp/(S(z2xdbujdr...
And wow, what a bunch of poppycock that nutriscore that system is. I'd heard of it but never looked into it. It considers "high" saturated fat, or "high" salt, or "high" energy density as negatives.
If the scale is A-F, that would put ground beef at about average which seems about right. Its a great source of protein and a good source of some vitamins and minerals, but is high in saturated fat and has a low amount of other vitamins and minerals.
For instance, they label Roquefort with an F because it's fatty and salty, but nobody's gotten fat eating that, you can't just go binging pounds of it, it's just not that kind of food.
> Breakfast cereal is a breakfast food made from processed cereal grains.
If your cereal mix contains only the grains/seeds and not loads of sugar it's almost impossible for it to be nutrionally bad.
Consumer's choice which cereal mix they buy.
Arguably, without advertising which makes you believe, incorrectly, that it is good for you, breakfast cereal _makes no sense_; it’s not surprising that late millennials and Gen Z, who were largely not exposed to this advertising, have foresaken it.
For an interesting small-scale model see Ribena in the UK (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribena); allegedly healthy high-sugar drink, used to be _everywhere_, until they stopped being able to use misleading ads to sell it.
No. They might be 3% sugars, but near entirety of corn flake is carbohydrates
For comparison, 100g of apples has an average of 10.4g of sugar: https://www.fatsecret.com/calories-nutrition/usda/apples?por..., and something like fruit loops is 30g of sugar per 100g (https://smartlabel.kelloggs.com/en_US/Product/Index/00038000...)
I see the typical American quest to eradicate (fats, then cholesterol, and now sugar) annoying.
Sugars are bad in that we only need so much of them and our brains are hardwired to be addicted to them/want more. Sugars from fruits are absorbed much more slowly than refined sugar.
Fats, sugars etc aren't inherently bad, there are healthy fats. But the main learning today is really that it's more about caloric intake (energy in, energy out) and it's easier to manage when fats/sugars & other carbs are delivered with foods that digest slowly/have a low GI - making us feel full for longer; it's better that our blood sugar experiences a constant slow release than spikes.
The problem is when we refine sugars & fats down and sprinkle them over _everything_ because "it tastes good". I can't believe American bread often contains a buttload of sugar. It's bread, not brioche!
Milk also contains slow-ish sugars, not refined sugar.
Can you explain that?
Where people get into trouble is their overall calorie intake and the breakdown of their macros, it's not uncommon for people to get too many calories from fats or carbs. If you're sedentary you don't really need a lot of calories period. But if you're keeping an eye on all those things a bowl of oatmeal in the morning isn't going to kill you.
Edit: Here's a list of cereals and their nutritional info: https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-maga... Note that at the recommended serving size, obviously some are more healthy than others, but frankly none of them are really going to kill you. A serving of cereal is only about 100-250 calories. The problem arises when you eat multiple servings in one sitting.
As in... eating normal sized breakfast ? Ain't nobody bothering to get the milk out of the fridge for 250 calories breakfast.
It looks like marketing move to look better tbh
Now obviously telling someone to eat sugary cereal isn't good health advice. But even if you opted for one of the less healthy cereals in my link - frosted cornflakes - one serving only has 11g sugar, 13% of your daily allowance. Not really going to kill you.
Sit down and eat three servings of frosted flakes in one go and yeah you'll slowly kill yourself.
There's very little difficulty in making eggs, two of them in a frying pan, wait, flip, done...
The other weird take was the people who kept saying "cereal" only refers to cereals that are high in sugar. The statement makes zero sense on its face, cereals with sugar are grammatically a subset of cereals...
Cereal in fact refers to a type of grass! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cereal But the topic here (literally in the headline) is breakfast cereals, some of those have added sugar, some of which don't.
I dunno, I really don't want to be pedantic, I just think you're saying "you shouldn't read what the words in the article say, you should read the words I say it means to say", and that's not how I read...
Yes, these are the primary sweetened cereals in the UK, but I don't think they're any healthier than the US versions. Frosties seem to be nutritionally equivalent to Lucky Charms just without the off-putting artificial colours.
I think it's simply that the granola is very dense, they list a bowl as 60g vs 30g for the sweetened cereal. I tend to just sprinkle a bit on top of a bowl of yoghurt and fresh fruit.
This is virtually all of them, though. I think it’s generally not as bad as it used to be, but it’s still refined sugar for breakfast and really not ideal.
Consumer habits notwithstanding there are many low/no sugar breakfast cereals available at any supermarket, they are usually not the ones targeting kids with cartoon characters and zany names on the box.
Whether it's worth the nutritional trade off, I dunno. But we also make eggs a lot, which requires more time and attention, and usually I end up eating them cold myself when I get back after dropping everyone off.
Hydration: I've noticed that I'm not so thirsty anymore, eating meals with so much vegetable matter, possibly because there's a lot of water in amongst the fiber and it gets freed up during digestion?
Of course you can "speed up" the process by blending them into a smoothie.
If you toast the oats first to make them crunchy, it's no longer the dish called "oatmeal" (which is a porridge) but now it's a kind of granola, which can be used as a breakfast cereal.
Oatmeal is nutritionally identical to cereal for the obvious reason that that's what it is.
Here's the nutrition sidebar for Quaker Oats rolled oats versus Cheerios:
+---------+----------+
| Oatmeal | Cheerios |
+--------------+---------+----------+
| Serving size | 40g | 39g |
+--------------+---------+----------+
| Calories | 150 | 140 |
+--------------+---------+----------+
| Fat | 3g | 2.5g |
+--------------+---------+----------+
| Carbohydrate | 27g | 29g |
+--------------+---------+----------+
| (sugar) | 1g | 2g |
+--------------+---------+----------+
| (fiber) | 4g | 4g |
+--------------+---------+----------+
| Protein | 5g | 5g |
+--------------+---------+----------+And even 1g per 40g is double 2g per 40g, not 'nutritionally identical'.
Here's Shredded Wheat: https://www.postshreddedwheat.com/products/the-original/
0g sugar per 60g serving size. Do I now conclude that you were trying to fool me into thinking oatmeal contains less sugar than cereal when in fact it contains much more?
No, that's nonsense, oatmeal is a kind of cereal. The amount of sugar in it isn't even related to whether it's oatmeal.
I think oatmeal and other high-GI foods are promoted as low-GI in hopes of helping wean diabetics and pre-diabetics off of even worse foods (e.g. something really bad like powdered donuts), akin to how methadone is used to try to help heroin addicts. But genuine low-GI foods would be things like eggs, cheese, or chicken breast (all with nearly 0 GI) or some raw veggies like raw broccoli or the greens in a leafy salad (in the neighborhood, roughly, of 10-20 GI). Cooking low-GI vegetables like broccoli defeats the purpose and raises its GI to around the same value as oatmeal.
I only buy steel-cut oats, which various sources on google say are around 42 GI [0][1]. I do concede that any form of oats are on the upper-end of low and/or medium, and aren't some magic super food and one should not focus just on GI.
Steel cut oats are definitely better than most breakfast cereals however.
Joel Fuhrman in his book on reversing diabates also recommends small portions of oats (but mostly says to eat veggies).
[0] https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/steel_cut_oats_are_a_nutrient_...
[1] https://www.nutritionletter.tufts.edu/ask-experts/q-before-c...
I use 100g because they have different servings amounts. In the UK, the serving size is just 30g not 39g.
I would note that reducing such foods to tables can miss the point. They make me feel very different to eat. One is a very moreish sugary frankenfood that makes me lose control of my appetite. I can eat it by the box. The other is something that makes me feel good but if I make too much, I'm done and can't finish it. Eating an excess is physically hard.
+---------+----------+
| Oatmeal | Cheerios |
+--------------+---------+----------+
| Serving size | 100g | 100g |
+--------------+---------+----------+
| Calories | 374 | 378 |
+--------------+---------+----------+
| Fat | 8g | 4.8g |
+--------------+---------+----------+
| Carbohydrate | 60g | 69.1g |
+--------------+---------+----------+
| (sugar) | 1.1g | 17.7g |
+--------------+---------+----------+
| (fiber) | 9g | 9.6g |
+--------------+---------+----------+
| Protein | 11g | 9.9g |
+--------------+---------+----------+† Which is to say, there's still a bit of added sugar, but not much, just like in the base Cheerios. (The rolled oats have no added sugar. The difference between "1g" of sugar in 40g of American rolled oats and "1.1g" in 100g of British rolled oats must be down to either different oats or rounding errors.)
I feel like the constant addition of relatively small amounts of sugar to random foods that aren't even supposed to be sweet might be a bigger issue than the inclusion of big heaps of sugar in foods that are supposed to be sweet. It's difficult to find beef jerky that is less than 10% sugar by weight. Rice Krispies are also 10% sugar by weight. There's no good reason for this.
Might explain some of the confusion in this thread.
The more healthy products are marked with a green mark. None of the usual brand has it because of high sugar (or sugar like) substances contained.
https://www.sundhedsplejersken.nu/familien/kostanbefalinger/... .. in Danish so you might want to Google translate.
Right, its within the space of breakfast cereal, not an alternative to it.
There's instant oatmeal. The kind that comes in packets and you just add water. Often has sugar added, often slathered with sugar. Possibly worse than a bowl of corn flakes. Highly processes with most of the starches and cellulose (fibre) reduced to simpler forms and readily and rapidly converted to glucose in the gut. High GI. Almost like candy.
There's quick-cooking AKA minute oatmeal. Gelatinizes in 3 minutes on the stove or the microwave. Still processed so the starches are easily digestible (that was the point when it was invented). Slightly better than instant oatmeal and corn flakes but still mid-level GI and GL.
Finally, there's oat meal. Steel-cut oats are just the seeds of the oat plant lightly crushed into large pieces. Not pre-cooked. Most palatable when cooked overnight. Very high in non-digestible fibre, mostly still complex starches that take considerable time to convert into glucose in your digestive system. Low GI.
It's oat meal that is most associated with glucose and blood pressure control, not so much oatmeal. Rule of thumb: the longer it takes to prepare, the more it takes to digest and the better it is for you if you're concerned about a healthy diet.
But the point is that oatmeal is not oatmeal, and discussing it as if it is is always going to be misleading.
That's still "oatmeal". "Oat meal" would be a slightly odder way to say oat flour.
In my university years, I used to eat whatever was cheap and available easy, the result was my GERD symptoms were so bad most nights I couldn’t get full night sleep. Over time I noticed some common triggers. Black pepper, garlic, raw tomato (weirdly cooked tomatoes don’t trigger as much symptoms), any citrus fruits, carbonated drinks to name a few. Mostly it was learning by suffering. I make conscious efforts now to avoid food with these triggers and manage the symptoms quite a bit when I am not traveling. But some nights still end up waking up with intense upper esophageal pain. Honestly over the years the sad truth I have now realized is fasting is sometimes better than consuming types of things now a day that we call food.
To fix late night issues, I just have to eat before 6pm.
Chew properly. Soups kill me. And anything tomato sauced based is out.
Also weirdly oatmeal can trigger issues for me. But I can get away with it in the morning. I think it's also a chewing issue.
A huge amount of digestion happens in the mouth. So now I get my partner to pre-chew most of my foods for me.
Umm... what's stopping you from chewing them yourself?
Why not blend/mince the food if it's a digestion issue
Does orange juice also cause issues?
Can you please explain this? I was following along nicely until this part.
I enlist yeast and bacteria to pre-chew some of my food, namely in sauerkraut/kimchi. Cooking also is a form of pre-chewing.
I don't have any GERD-specific resources to suggest, as I have a solid foundation from childhood of eating minimally-processed food from the garden and local farmers. To cook for my family I use the NYT Cooking app because it's easy, and cookbooks from the library. Ayurvedic cookbooks, Instant Pot cookbooks, anti-inflammation cookbooks; all have some good options.
I absolutely love eating, not just in the moment but how I feel after a good meal. When I'm stressed, however, I tend to eat easy foods that are less healthy; feels good in the moment, but not so great afterwards, kinda like Rand al'Thor (in Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time) might feel reaching through that oil-slick taint (a difficult word to use with a straight face here...) to access the Source. So, I work to take care of myself in general so that the gestalt is positive; better action begets better actions. It doesn't always work, and when it's a downward spiral the best I can do is forgive myself, not let my failures get in the way, and keep at it. Good luck!
That's one reason. The other reason is, that the more sugar you eat, the more water you need.
I'm getting better at not eating "just because" or based on what time of day it is or that I won't be able to eat for a few hours (trying out fasting a few times helped me be okay with going without- I'm not going to die that easily. Probably has roots in a stressful childhood where eating was an escape from family strife). Sugary foods are so easy to eat and a difficult treadmill to dismount. So far it's like a local maximum that's still too easy to roll off of but it feels so good up there when it all comes together.
The amount of sugar in basically all breakfast foods is just insane, then people actually pour even more sugar on top. I don't understand how people can eat this type of food to begin with, but especially first thing in the morning.
The other reply was about rice krispies with a spoonful of sugar, which, as an American, is what I was thinking of.
But your reply makes me think you aren't American, and are thinking of stuff like muesli or oats. (Because nobody puts syrup or honey on what we call "breakfast cereal" in the US.)
Since I've moved in with my SO, I no longer live so far from work, nor do I cycle as often. If I eat nothing in the morning I need to drink 2-3 coffees to not feel hungry until lunch. If I eat breakfast, I feel fine -- I no longer need those 2-3 coffees before lunch.
I think somewhere in my 20s I mixed the signals for hunger and attention fatigue and somehow decoupled one from the other.
If I am going to be doing heavy lifting all day theb a high protein breakfast will leave me feeling good after all the work is done.
Meanwhile, if I am going to be doing a lot of walking/running/jogging then a high carb breakfast will be more helpful.
Your case is a minority. I'm guilty myself of this kind of thinking, so instead of saying "I don't understand people doing x" I try to ask myself "why do people do x?" or "why am I different than other people?".
On the other hand if you skip breakfast for a week, you’ll start waking up and not feeling that hungry.
When I wake up, I have very low blood sugar. I feel just like you -- the last thing I want to do is start eating -- but I've learned from experience I absolutely need a jolt of carbs including a decent dose of sugar to kick-start my brain and my day, just to bring my blood sugar up to a normal functioning level. Otherwise I'm much less productive the whole morning.
I'm not a dessert person, I don't have a sweet tooth. I'll happily munch on steaks and ribs all day long. But at the start of the day, they simply won't bring my blood sugar up to a functioning level in any reasonable amount of time.
I do not understand this "meat" thing at all. When I'm hungry, the last thing I want is dead animal flesh. If I'm hungry I prefer something fresh and plant based like carrots, tofu, apples, or something like this.
The amount of meat in basically all diets is just insane, then people actually pour even more animal products on top. I don't understand how people can eat this type of food to begin with, but especially as part of their staple diet.
Did you try adding more sugar ? That usually does the trick if the food is too bland. Rule of thumb when I was a kid was that the spoon should stand upward on its own once you have finished. /s
Even healthy cereal is incredibly energy dense, we have no need for it unless you're active enough (not so many wfh developers). That aside so many cereals (esp in America) are just sugar bombs.
Children could do with a solid energy dense breakfast, less sugar more plain oats & other cereals. Adults, it depends. But nobody needs coco puffs, except only as a treat.
In the quantities we're all taking about, it's hard to say these "breakfasts" are positively contributing though.
It's a nutrient. This is an enumerable set of chemicals. Balancing nutrition is a different matter entirely.
> In the quantities we're all taking about, it's hard to say these "breakfasts" are positively contributing though.
I eat sugary cereals every morning, and it's about half my daily sugar consumption. I don't see any problem with it—I don't have diabetes, I have a healthy weight, etc. The idea that foods are somehow inherently bad because they're sugary is ridiculous. It's the eating habits that are unhealthy, not the food. Sugar isn't rat poison ffs.
The problem is to some people sugar is also more addictive than alcohol or their favorite recreational drug. I'm going out on a limb and guessing rat poison isn't as addictive to rats.
That's not a sugar problem, that's a consumption problem. It's also a necessary nutrient to function, so it's addictive somewhat by definition, like water is addictive, or oxygen is.
So is classifying foods as "unhealthy" or "healthy" but people do that all the time.
https://youtu.be/dBnniua6-oM?si=1_OBYqk6vmQl4N5K
So I’m sorry but some sugary foods ARE inherently bad and sugary cereals are one of them and that’s not even getting into the addiction side of it and how marketing them to kids sets many up for obesity and chronic diseases
Btw you can also be “skinny fat” from sugars
I also don't want to truly deny the addictive nature of sugar. It can have enormously negative effects on peoples lives. The answer is not to reject sugar, though! It is to moderate sugar intake.
People who start smoking before their 20s have a much MUCH harder time quitting.
Personally though I eat a lot of it myself. Ideally I would only get maybe 15 grams of sugar a day, tops.
That's what carbs are. Carbs are sugars. I don't see many people out here living off formaldehyde. If you eat bread, it's metabolized into sugars. If you eat potatoes, these are metabolized into sugars. I don't get the point.
“Sugars” covers a wide variety of more complex chemicals, from maltose to lactose.
so is iron, selenium, fats, proteins etc. dosage makes the poison.
consider that in nature, the only way to get anything nearly as sugar dense as sugar was to invade the nests of territorial colonies of venemous wasp like insects. getting a spoon full of sugar took guts and commitment!
Sure, but since when has "nutritious" meant "not poisonous"? It means "full of nutrients".
While I wouldn’t consider it nutritious, my kids have definitely gotten me to impulse purchase them lots of these goofy cereals like Reese’s puffs and Icee cereal. Almost always they try them and say they are disgusting and want to go back to the classics: Lucky Charms, Cocoa Puffs, Fruity Pebbles etc.
Unless it was sarcasm, then kudos - becauaw I did actually laugh aloud at that twist ending.
Making scrambled eggs isn't all that hard but surely you see that pouring some cereal and milk in a bowl is a fraction of the effort, even if the absolute difference isn't that huge?
The only time I would be concerned would be if I was pressed for time - in which case I’d be looking for something like a granola bar or protein shake over cereal.
It’s a pretty convenient food.
Sure the super sugary ones aren’t great for you, but generally I like cereals and they’re better than a lot of other common breakfast options (pastries).
If the rest of your day is high protein, and you have a good macro nutrient count, I guess it’s fine.
If you’re in a time crunch (heh) you can always skip breakfast? A lot of my peers have started doing that (out of laziness) and we are all fine.
There’s a product called magic spoons that does keto* cereal. They’re a lot more expensive, and they stick to your teeth a little. But I liked them when I had them. Food for thought (heh).
Edit: autocorrect
I do often skip breakfast also, but will typically have cheerios as my first food around 1pm or so.
There’s just so much snake oil nonsense with nutrition information that I’m highly skeptical of most claims.
Cheerios are perfectly healthy for almost everyone. You don't need to buy an expensive buckwheat quinoa kale macadamia nut SuperFood(tm)
A lot of the anti-carb stuff is from people who think eating meat all the time is best and don't want to hear different. Even if you (falsely) believed your ancestors were mainly hunters, that doesn't mean they were eating only supermarket steaks made of muscle tissue. They would've been eating all the tissues. Organ meats. Bon apetite.
I eat a good breakfast only if I need to do an intense effort, or if I cannot control when I'm going to eat for lunch (business trips can have difficult schedules..).
There are some important and complex considerations with respect to certain things like gut flora, for instance. Or people with particular genes that change how their metabolism works, or their liver enzymes. But nutrition science is primitive and self-contradictory at the moment. We lack the knowledge to provide a personalized medicine approach.
Most of what you need in your diet is "empty calories". One must carry on, thermodynamically speaking. Last night at dinner I had ~500 calories of rice, which was barely enough to compensate for an hour of moderate bicycling. If a person's lifestyle is so sedentary that they can't even sink 300 calories of carbs, the problem in that scenario is the inactivity, not the carbs.
Better how?
Wish I was never exposed to that junk. Getting off that stuff was 100X harder than cigarettes.
I read recently that sugar is disappearing from the average the kitchen cupboard in the Netherlands. Inspired by this my wife and me ritually disposed our sugar jar that was indeed unused for a long time.
Diamonds are plentiful and now easy to mass produce; we even accept the reality of blood mines. Mainstream news media is by and large lying to us for their owner’s gains, whether that be politically, economically, or culturally. And finally most of the dietary information the government drilled into us about things like the “food pyramid” was wrong from the beginning and we’re again only just accepting that. Just like how we’re finally accepting that eggs and meats are good for you and that maybe the multi-billion dollar food industry selling us delicious bags of pure calories is evil in every respect.
I'm in my 30s now. It turns out it was a lot of BS.
all news agencies larger than a certain size should either be non-profit or publicly-owned
It’s only after we have an obesity epidemic so people start questioning whether our cereals have become candy.
You can also add fruits and/or peanut butter if you want a bit of variety!
The "breakfast of champions" slogan, given how popular it became, sounds like it would make for an interesting case study where people agreed to marketing, even if their individual experiences must have been that the food isn't really as filling as other options. Maybe it's a breakfast of sports champions who eat it as pre-workout, but surely it's not a breakfast that makes champions.
I know a lot of D1 football players not only eat cereal for breakfast but also as a late night snack.
Nestlé in Europe has made a few versions with more whole grains and less sugar, with no detectable change in taste. For a while, I was eating rice-based low-sugar breakfast cereal with added vitamins, simply because the alternative was a pastry and coffee (very busy work weeks). I despise Nestlé, but, hey, at least here’s a healthier version of our product — not healthy, healthier.
The race to the bottom in terms of sugar and additives might also be a factor as to why breakfast cereal is in decline. Make better products and we’ll buy them.
https://www.dietandfitnesstoday.com/glycemicIndexDetails.php...
And besides, I think we all decided that sugary soda is unhealthy. But we still consider cereal healthy. They both seem to trigger a similar metabolic response, and have a similar satiety profile.
Everyone chooses for themselves, in their own circumstances, though. Even straight up eating glucose with caffeine makes for a great pre-workout mix in a pinch.
In other words, it depends on the person. :)
Some people are not fans of eating things approaching soda GI, as they have a feeling of a sugar rush, followed by a crash and hunger. No need for a medical condition - it can simply be a dietary preference.
It depends on the person and circumstance whether GI above 55 is high. Everyone needs to figure out for themselves, but it helps to be aware of GI in food and see how different GIs make you feel and function. And it helps to be aware that soda-type GI isn't considered very healthy by some, with ongoing debate.
Also, possibly 55+, 65+, or whatever arbitrary threshold is not too high for most people. There's some debate around that now. So I still think it doesn't hurt to be aware. But possibly.
There’s food with a high glycemic index that is most certainly not “bad food” (like fruit), and there’s food with a low glycemic index that definitely could be by what I assume is your criteria (like butter).
Also the statement “cereals have a high glycemic index” isn’t even true, since some of them do (like corn flakes), while some of them don’t (oatmeal, which is close to oranges).
A much simpler explanation that also makes a lot more sense in my opinion, since I do believe corporations are rational (if somewhat sociopathic) actors, is that products that cater to “the public good” often simply aren’t very popular.
It’s also incredibly reductive to use a term like “the public good” with no elaboration whatsoever, as if this was some kind of axiom that we can all agree upon.
Is the public good to maximize duration of life, quality of life, multitude of choice or something else entirely? And who gets to decide?
I thought it was pretty clear that the "breakfast if champions" slogan was simply a reference to how they paid athletes, specially olympian medalists, to endorse their product.
The only options I can find that are not loaded with glyphosate, sugar or salt, and that also still have fiber in them are private label or from companies not included on the graph.
Post, General Mills, and Kellogs don’t sell organic options with their own branding, so all their stuff has glyphosate applied at harvest (search for: round up drying agent)
Kellogs owns Kashi which (I think is still organic), and the local stores don’t carry Kashi stuff that meets my requirements any more.
The manufacturers with reasonable offerings that I know of are: Amazon (365 whole foods market brand), nature’s path (privately held) food for life (38 employees; independent), and probably trader joes.
They all would either be excluded from the analysis in the article or put under “private label” which is increasing slightly over time.
However, their combined marketing budget is some tiny fraction of the companies pumping out unhealthy garbage.
Maybe if finding non-terrible cereal wasn’t a complicated project, then sales would start ticking back up.
Have you tried steel-cut oats? They are wonderfully chewy [0]. I usually mix a little rolled oats into some steel cut.
Or something like oat flour pancakes. You can even make a bunch ahead of time, freeze them, then reheat in a toaster in the morning.
- 1/4 cup sprouted oats
- bit less than a handful of frozen mango, frozen strawberries, 1 banana
- small amount of goji berries
- 1 tbsp ground flax
- 1/3 tbsp cinnamon
- 1 cup water
Stir to mix and then pressure cook in instant pot for 10 minutes. Prepare large eating bowl with:
- 1/2 cup frozen blueberries
- 1/2 cup walnuts
Pour porridge on top and mix (the frozen berries will defrost and bring everything to almost a good eating temperature, but leaving enough time to clean the pot before it has truly cooled enough). I guessed on a few measurements since I only really measure the oats, water, and powdered ingredients and eyeball everything else. Easy to adapt for >1 person.
I'd never bother trying to find a "healthy" cereal in a box as long as I had access to basic cooking and food storage facilities.
I use regular rolled oats with 2 parts milk, 2 parts water and 1 part heavy cream.
im sure its good though.
I can’t get over oatmeal’s texture.
First, if you don't like the texture, as others have suggested, go with steel cut oats or whole oats (I always get Quaker whole oats, cheaper than a lot of the steel cut oat brands).
I like my oats savory. I pretty much eyeball everything but I do about a little more than half a cup, add water until I can barely feel it through the top of the oats, microwave for 2 minutes. Then add a little bit of butter and salt, mix it up, and you've got yourself a breakfast.
If I had to make a bet I'd say in the next decade of so, Kellogs and other cereal manufacturers will kill off most of their cereal brands, keep a few well known brands around, and make a shift to the "healthier cereals" space that's occupied by these smaller players and private labels.
Found normal section, tons of these known brands like Kellogs, when looking at content it was all 17+ grams of pure sugar amd looking very artificially. Huge shelves full of it. Fuck that, I aint going to ruin life of my kids.
Went to bio section of the store, picked up some Carrefour's branded oatmeal with few bits of thin slices of dark chocolate (unfortunately this was requirement), still 10g of sugars IIRC but much more fiber and overall looking more healthy.
Priming from TV ads is still strong, folks buy tons of that crap for their kids thinking how great parents they are (and they drown it with big glass of orange/apple juice, whats better than starting every day with 50g or more of raw sugars when you are 4 years old and weight 20kg).
Poor health outcomes are a direct result of these subsides.
See The McLibel case, 1997 (1) particularly the statement "You could eat a roll of Sellotape as part of a balanced diet" (2)
Just eat regular food, during breakfast time. (Although eggs are fine)
But unsweetened (Greek) yoghurt with some oats/"granola?" and chopped fruit (like strawberries) is amazing.
Energy in energy out, Adult intake for average activity level is like 2k kCal or 8k kJ or so. I usually think like 1500/6000 or so since I wfh.
Let's do American so take your 1500 kCal, maybe leave keep 800 for dinner, 500 for lunch, 200 for breakfast (and snack during the day). So just make sure your breakfast is 150-200kCal.
Apparently it's 90kCal for a large egg (78g), so you could have 2 maybe with a dash of sauce of some kind for breakfast just fine.
But otherwise you could have anything: https://travel.earth/breakfast-around-the-world/ just ensure food type/portion size is controlled and balanced for vitamins etc as well. Soups (Asia and other parts) look pretty good too so I may try adding that in myself to my routine.
It’s just refined carbohydrates, a sprinkling of vitamins, and ton of sugar. You could be eating pastries with a multivitamin and you wouldn’t be doing any worse.
Yogurt or oatmeal and fruit is great. Eggs are amazing. My grandfather was a doctor who ate bacon and eggs every day. He made it to 90, died of prostate cancer. He didn’t eat sugar though. I tend to skip breakfast and go straight to lunch, otherwise I gain weight. I can’t personally do three meals a day. Everyone is different though.
I will treat myself to a bowl of Lucky Charms every once in a while, though.
What was the obesity rate in 1993 vs. 2023?
Looking in my stock cupboard, the raw fats I do get are probably the best bang for the buck nutritionally.
They were fine with trans fats being bad, but when saturated fats are also demonstrated to impact health outcomes by the exact same methodology, they resist it because it condemns their favorite foods.
It seems the health benefits are contingent on what you replace saturated fat calories with (i.e. replacing saturated fats with polyunsaturated fats does seem to reduce heart disease, but replacing them with processed carbs does the opposite.)
The state of HN on nutrition discourse is completely screwed.
Dietary cholesterol not an issue: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6024687/
Decent Summary of our current understanding of the health effects of different kinds of fats: https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/the-truth-abo...
If canola and other scary industrial seed oils are so bad, how come it improves health outcomes especially when swapped to from butter? How come canola has even more impressive nutritional profile than olive oil? How come unsaturated fats improve health outcomes when swapped to from saturated fats?
Here’s a good roundup of the research: https://www.the-nutrivore.com/post/a-comprehensive-rebuttal-...
If you can honestly say that you feel good after eating anything fried in canola oil or soybean oil then I don't know what to tell you. Good luck with that. To me it is blatant garbage. It is disgusting rancid toxic waste. Inedible. I feel good after eating eggs or steak fried in clarified butter and have no cardio health issues whatsoever. Have been eating this way for decades. Blood checks are all good. No issues. None.
Canola is primarily monounsaturated.
> Saturated fat is essential for health.
Saturated fat is literally not essential.
> Cholesterol is nutritious
> All of that bullshit advice against saturated fat and dietary cholesterol has been completely debunked many years ago. It was fraudulent science.
You're spouting dangerous, pseudoscientific nonsense.
It is 35% polyunsaturated and whatever monounsaturated fat it contains is inferior quality for human needs. Rancid toxic trash.
> You're spouting dangerous, pseudoscientific nonsense.
You're a boomer living 50 years in the past with outdated fraudulent industry "research".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_paradox
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/317118
My relatives eat huge amounts of saturated fat and animal products many have lived to 100 years old (not a western diet). We don't have heart disease in my family. I've been mostly animal based for the past 20 years, eating multiple times the recommended daily allowance of saturated fat and cholesterol, and latest blood checks / blood pressure are perfect. Also cut excess sugar/carbs out of my diet 20 years ago. I am living proof for myself. Whenever I eat a meal high in canola oil I instantly feel like absolute shit, but I feel good after eating fatty red meat (burgers only with no fries or sugar drinks). The vegetable oil fries and soft drinks are what kills you. Not the burger.
But, yes, sugar is more consistently a problem than fat.
I think that is part of what happened to me. My blood sugar levels were going up, despite no changes in diet or medication. I wanted to see how much dietary carb levels were affecting that, and decided to try lowering carbs. Nothing radical--just lowering from the 50-60% calories from carbs that is typical to around 40% [1].
I did not attempt to cut calories during this. In fact I did things that would increase calories of some items. E.g., if I was getting a sandwich (50% calories from carbs) I'd order it with mayo or extra cheese or extra meat to get the percent from carbs <= 40%.
Blood sugar did come down, but to my surprise so did weight. It turned out I was eating something like 30% fewer calories, because I wasn't hungry enough for more.
[1] I picked 40% because it is easy to calculate. If something is N calories, it is 40% from carbs if it has N/10 g of carbs. That makes it easy to keep a running total throughout the day of how many grams over or under you are from 40%.
I also don’t think he meant every day
Nice work! You gotta do what works for you and I'm glad you've found a system that works for you. Keep it up!
People who haven’t updated their nutritional information priors live in this weird world where anything that tastes good is either too sugary or too fatty. Like, if that’s true, what are we supposed to eat? Baked Boneless skinless Chicken breast with no salt?
In fact, I worked with a lady whose job it was to put the “helpful nutrition grab and go” labels at the food company I worked for, and she had a lot of power over recommendations and her basic beliefs were humans should eat the blandest, least flavorful carbs and proteins, and anything that tastes good is bad for you.
Hard boiled eggs were a “red” item but a Cliff Bar was green. Her and I were friends and went on walks together every day, but we constantly got in arguments about what was healthy and what wasn’t.
https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/product/egg-mcmuffin.html
This, with a cup of black coffee, is probalby a lot better than a bowl of Froot Loops. The official per-serving calories for Froot Loops, with milk, is 210. But I would guess that most people eat at least 50% more, putting it as the same calories as the McMuffin. And you're less likely to be hungry again in 30 minutes.
That comes to 455 calories, 49g carbs (3g of which are sugar), 21g fat, 19g protein, 4g fiber, 1090mg sodium, and 250mg cholesterol.
That's 40% of calories from carb, 43% from fat, 17% from protein. That mix is fine on the carbs, a little high on the fat, and a little low on the protein.
The cholesterol is high (over 80% of the RDA for a 2000 calories diet), but for most people dietary cholesterol doesn't have much affect on blood cholesterol so this is only an issue for some.
The sodium is a little under 50% of the RDA for a 2000 calorie diet, so might be something to think about in conjunction with your lunch, dinner, and snacking plans for the rest of the day.
That's the key here. For most people there is no need to have every item of every meal or snack be nutritionally great in every way. Things just need to not be so far out of whack that they will cause immediate harm (e.g., not cause a large spike in blood sugar if that is something your body has trouble handling well).
What you need is for the average over time to be good, where the amount of variation you can have over the averaging period is larger the shorter the averaging period.
Some of my favourite cereals are shredded wheat, cheerios, rice krispies. All very simple cereals. If you're feeling fancy you can have a porridge with jam or a granola with no fruits.
The only thing to say is the milk. I know a lot of people develop lactose interances as an adult so it might be troublesome to keep having such a high lactose intake. I think some milk alternatives are much nicer nowadays and add some of their own sweetness to cereal if you like that. I personally have no issues with my low fat dairy milk every morning
https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/should-i-throw-out-my...
The practice used to be effectively illegal because it contaminates the harvested crop, but lobbyists got the government to increase legal limit of glyphosate in food by 300x to enable the practice. It’s a carcinogen according to the WHO and California.
Rice Krispies are low fiber, high sugar and high salt: https://smartlabel.kelloggs.com/Product/Index/00038000200038
Shredded wheat is fine, except it’s legal or use glyphosate on wheat as a drying agent at harvest.
All the organic cheerios I’v tried are terrible (any suggestions, internet?) I’ve had decent luck with pretty much every other type of organic cereal I have tried, however. I filter on low salt, low sugar and high fiber.
The last time I checked, spraying roundup directly on organic crops wasn’t allowed.
This is meaningless. Probably the two worst places to look to for deciding whether something is a significant cancer risk.
Do people still not realize that organic does not mean healthier? It's more of a marketing term than a good way of choosing what to put into your body
https://www.kelloggs.co.uk/en_GB/products/rice-krispies.html
2.4g of sugar per serving is completely acceptable for me.
Glyphosate has been found in UK cereals too but I haven't seen enough evidence to be concerned about it.
Honey or jam on toast would contain more sugar than a bowl of rice krispies.
Carbohydrates are also not unhealthy so I'm going to completely disregard that last statement.
So the profitable sector is feeding fat people?
But I observed the same thing later in high school when I got up on time but forgot to buy milk and hence went to school fasted.
Back then, I thought "break(ing your)fast" was somehow important for your energy levels at the start of the day (good PR!) so I was hesitant to follow really through and I guess the latent sugar cravings did the rest (but I remember not being "hangry" as others described it).
Now, after experimenting with a lot of regiments, I know that I'm far better off by "skipping breakfast". As a general rule of thumb giving your body a rest time of 12 hours and not eating 2 hours before sleeping gives your body an additional strong signal for its diurnal coordination.
That being said I knew a very athletic guy who before sleeping devoured 3000kcal (he barely ate throughout the day) and then judging by his exceptional body composition and athletic achievements could recover excellently.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/07/23/business/shrinkflation-pr...
It costs them money to ship a bunch of air to the stores. They can’t fit nearly as much product on a truck this way. They do it because it improves product quality, not because they’re trying to rip people off.
(Yes, I know about Grape-Nuts, and other cereals with far higher densities.)
- A few web sites say American (breakfast) cereal boxes are roughly 12" x 8" x 2" - so 192 cu. in., or ~3,150 cu. cm.
- Similarly, the product weight for a standard box of Cap'n Crunch(tm) cereal seems to be ~12oz. - so ~340g. (Frosted Flakes(tm), Cheerios(tm), and many others look pretty close to this.)
Divide those figures, and we get ~0.11g/cu. cm.
The actual density of carbohydrates is ~1.5g/cu. cm.
So, with a generous allowance for settling, I should have said "engineered to be ~92% air by volume".
More interesting: A couple searches say that wheat, from a farmer's PoV, is currently selling for ~$5.75 per bushel. And the standard wheat bushel weighs 60 pounds. So an "all-grain" breakfast cereal should yield ~80 12-oz. boxes from that $5.75 bushel of wheat...or about 7.2 cents per box.
Far, far better to be a big corporate middle-man than an American farmer or consumer, eh?
Is it a healthy breakfast? There are certainly better options with a little bit more effort. But it is far less unhealthy than it used to be.
For what it's worth, I stumbled on oatmeal with a bit of honey and berries as my go-to meal. A diabetic friend brought that up as a breakfast recommended by their dietitian, and I've seen it recommended other places as well. It takes 5 minutes to prepare in the microwave at 50% power to prevent overflowing, in which time I could have completely finished a bowl of cereal.
It’s a bit pricey but in addition to berries I’ll also mix in freeze dried fruit, which is immensely more shelf stable than fresh without adding sugar.
I imagine it's still better for you than a vat of Rice Krispies with milk and sugar but that's a low bar.
Bananas in particular are pretty high in sugar, and other than potassium their nutrient density is nothing special.
Also, their nutrient density is perfectly fine. It’s high in fiber, potassium, vitamin C, and vitamin B6.
Weird name to use; even if you want something biblical, there are probably less offputting references to bread.
if you take a vitamin pill, make sure it's bioavailable, ideally using EDTA, or some other polydentate ligand.
Diamonds, another product which makes no sense outside the context of marketing are presumably some other marketing failure, possibly just failure of the industry to address bad press.
My favorite was the bidirectional boxes in Mexico, after being forced to add warning labels on the front:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37245593
> Companies like Coca-Cola and Kraft Heinz have begun designing their products so that their packages don’t have a true front or back, but rather two nearly identical labels — except for the fact that only one side has the required warning. As a result, supermarket clerks often place the products with the warning facing inward, effectively hiding it.
A good carne asada burrito works too for that job.
Now those cereals are still there, but obscenely overpriced, and the aisle is full of Calvin Cereals.
"even though cereal sales have been dipping consistently since the early 2000s, we're still looking at a $10 billion a year industry."
"millennials are more concerned than other groups with getting sufficient protein and fiber in the morning, and they aren't likely to see cereal satisfying that need. Millennials are also the most likely age group to say that cereal just gives them a sugar rush in place of actual energy."
"As everyone who knows their cereal history can tell you, the Baby Boomers were actually the ones who first got hooked on sugary cereal as kids. The industry found a huge boon when the Greatest Generation decided to market to them using cartoon tigers and cereals that were 50 percent sugar by weight—like Sugar Smacks. So instead of blaming the generation that lost its sweet tooth, maybe the onus belongs on the people who first thought that marshmallows for breakfast was a good idea."
[1] https://www.gq.com/story/the-real-reason-millennials-arent-e...
I only eat between noon and 8PM, so I only eat lunch and dinner.
I do eat rolled oats on occasion though, about once a week when I don't have time to prepare my usual salad for lunch, I often stir in about a tbsp of cashew or almond butter.
It's super simple to make, or look out for müsli.
Now I know most cereal is more unhealthy than this sounds, and likely not even using real chocolate (aka chocolate-colored palm oil derivative).
[1]: https://calvinandhobbes.fandom.com/wiki/Chocolate_Frosted_Su...
But I’m going to try some other options. My diet is much better after breakfast, I don’t know why I can only tolerate extremely easy to digest food at breakfast.
So far numbers lipid panels looking good for me. Plus significant reduction in meat consumption and replaced with more leaner protein options.
Personally, when I am lazy my go to is poke bowls. Easy to prepare and a plethora of vegetable options to explore
As for cereals, I eat them with cocoa instead of milk, just add a spoon... far tastier.
If plain oatmeal qualifies, I think larger grocery stores still carry that.
There are some interesting attempts by a company called Holy Crap Cereals (holycrap.com), and they use ingredients like chia seeds (which expand in liquid) in their "skinny bitch," cereals. The branding attracted attention anyway. One of the ingredients in higher end muesli is whey, which is as pure a protein source as one can get.
Trader Joe's Muesli is quite good and reasonably priced. Ingredients are whole grain oats, sunflower seeds, raisins (raisins, sunflower oil), rice crisp (brown rice, caramelized pear juice concentrate, sunflower oil), pumpkin seeds, coconut, dried apples and sliced almonds.
<https://www.traderjoesgroceryreviews.com/trader-joes-muesli-...>
<https://traderjoesrants.com/2021/09/19/trader-joes-muesli-ce...>
It's $4/lb or about $0.25/oz, as compared with $0.30/oz for Kellogg's Corn Flakes ($5.29 @ 18 oz.).
Many stores will have a selection of "healthy" or whole-grain cereals, often smaller labels. Prices can vary considerably, especially at premium markets (e.g., Whole Foods or local specialty markets). Even general-product markets often carry these, though there are many granola-flavoured candies out there as well with sugar as one of the top ingredients, often 2nd place on the list.
The other option is to buy a mix of whole grains, nuts, fruit, etc., and mix your own.
For US products, scale and agricultural policy (strongly preferring bulk grain, sugar, and processed-food production) has a large part to play. Another huge element is advertising, particularly children's advertising, of high-sugar cereals.
I'm wondering if part of the decline of the processed-cereal market isn't due to the general decline in television watching and cord-cutting.
Flipside is that similar advertising is likely to migrate to games and child-focused online video. If it hasn't already.
(I'm not part of the audience of either, nor would my extensive ad-blocking allow me to see what's being targeted to such content.)
That said, it’s great humanity learned to produce more food than we need then ways to process and store it for years later. Hopefully we’l never need that knowledge again.
In the dim glow of the morning light, Randy's kitchen morphed into a dangerous playground of illicit indulgence. His hands, trembling with equal parts anticipation and fear, clutched the red box – Captain Crunch, a ticket to another dimension, a realm of mania and delirium where each gold nugget was laced with that potent sugar, a crystalline substance so powerful, it could send a man hurtling through the universe, teetering on the edge of madness. The legend of its potency was whispered in dark alleys, tales of brave souls venturing too deep, taken by its spell, their sanity a small price for that euphoric trip. And Randy? Well, he was all in, craving the rush, the thrill, the unpredictability of it all.
He set the stage with a meticulousness that only those who've danced with the devil can understand. The milk – not just any milk, but UHT, cold, almost frozen, a liquid gateway that would potentiate the drug's effects, making the experience a maelstrom of sensation. As the milk splashed onto those gold nuggets, the chemical reaction was immediate and fierce. The world around began to dissolve, his senses heightened, colors and sounds blending into a psychedelic tapestry. He was on the ride, and there was no stopping now. Every bite, a calculated risk, every crunch, a siren's call to the abyss. But, as with all great highs, the threat of the crash loomed, the sugar's sharp edges threatening to tear him apart from the inside. The dance had begun, and Randy, a willing participant, swayed to its seductive rhythm, chasing the dragon that was Captain Crunch.
Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth about Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar - Your Brain's Silent Killers
by David Perlmutter
Edit: Regarding questioning tradition and rules- I remember reading a book called "Indians of the Oaks" and feeling pretty validated that the traditional diet of the aboriginal people of the San Diego region only had 2 meals a day, and they managed just fine.
https://www.amazon.com/Indians-oaks-Mellicent-Humason-Lee/dp...
Though I did experience “breakfast is for dinners leftovers” in one family and that seems to work well when planned for
Just takes one pot and a few minutes, some pesto and done. Cleaning up after making eggs is more work than the entire spaghetti dish.
I don’t have canned sauce (a me thing), I make it just by doing “olive oil in pan with garlic, then throw in some cut up tomatoes”. I really like this but it’s a thing. Pasta pot is of course bigger than a pan too.
But I’m more talking about the time commitment since mornings are usually “I want to eat ASAP”
And egg cleanup is one pan? Scrambled there’s a bowl but this is why God invented washing machines
Ultimately everyone has their own rhythm though
I should add that this take is particularly absurd when talking about breakfast cereal, which is a relatively modern product and it's adoption was mainly due to marketing than actual health benefits, let alone traditional diets.
Interestingly Mexico is leading in many ways to address it by prohibiting cartoons on sugary cereals (and more health warnings on labeling). Kelloggs has been fighting it in court.
https://www.bakeryandsnacks.com/Article/2022/01/18/Mexico-we...
Diabetics have to be aware of this and time their meds appropriately.
I have a similar story about mashed potato - they wanted to try it for whatever reason and so they did. Just a bowl of mashed potato, nothing else. The verdict was that it was pretty plain! (To make it worse, I would guess it was instant just-add-water stuff.)
Oh another one - in reverse, and about myself - I like to have bhel puri for breakfast sometimes. It's basically cereal^, but actually tastes nice. And I'll take chutneys over milk any day.
^bhel is literally sugar-free 'rice krispies' or whatever it's called, but I suppose rice isn't technically a cereal, but certainly a bowl of puffed rice with milk would be called '[breakfast] cereal'.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/32042/corn-flakes-were-i...
I had a conversation with my wife a few years back, about how a lot of things that are deemed acceptable or situationally appropriate are cultural. And sugared-breakfast-cereal vs real food came up.
My conclusion was, cereal is cheap and sugar is addictive. Better to take the time to eat a good non-processed-food breakfast.
Then I have made a very detailed analysis of everything that I was eating and I have begun to weigh myself every day at the same hour and in the same conditions with high resolution scales, to be able to assess the effect of the changes in my diet.
After replacing the junk food that I was buying with food cooked at home from raw ingredients, after a year I have reduced my weight to two thirds of the initial weight and then I have kept it constant for the next two decades.
The worst offenders among the junk food that I had to completely eliminate from my daily intake, had been fruit juices and fruit yogurts and breakfast cereals, all of which contain excessive amounts of sugars, regardless of producer.
Now, instead of breakfast cereals, I eat at breakfast home-made bread (baked quickly in a microwave oven), made of pure wheat flour, without any additives.
Cheap/easily available, tasty/desirable thanks to sugar, trivial&quick to make and eat when time is at a premium - that sounds perfect in general, doubly perfect when you're trying to ensure kids eat something relatively nutritious before school. I imagine that's why cereals stuck around - it's the "trick kids into drinking milk" plus energy booster for school children.
(Also, sure, it's "better to take the time to eat a good non-processed food breakfast", but most people have neither the time nor money for that.)
Unlike breakfast cereals, they do not contain sugars, but when eaten simultaneously with sweetened milk, there will be no noticeable taste difference. When you sweeten the milk yourself, the amount of added sugar is normally far smaller than the unbelievably high amounts typical for breakfast cereals.
Example: https://www.uncletobys.com.au/products/cereals/uncle-tobys-v...
I'm talking about the total fertility rate and how people like me refuse to have any children because society refuses to pay us to have children.
I think millennials and younger people should continue to hold out and have fewer (preferably zero) children until we get a more favorable deal from society. Right now individual parents pay way too much of the cost to raise children. I think if we can lower TFR to about one or less for a decade or two, we can get a much better deal.
Back to the topic, I think it is worth asking if cereal consumption is down simply because we have fewer children eating cereal than before. Is that not possible? Do adults eat cereal every morning?
Perhaps this is the Great Filter–conscious species become so entitled, effete, and apathetic that they refuse to reproduce until they either fall back into the dark ages or go extinct.
Now, the same people are buying up multiple properties that the next generation would otherwise live in, so they can rent-seek instead of earning the money improving society.
Indeed, the previous generation claiming the current generation is "entitled" is a story as old and boring as time, but the ones now obliviously claiming it without realizing they had it better, pretending they were "roughing it" with their 1-income mortgages, are truly the most entitled of all.
A billion dollars split evenly over the US population nets around $2.98 per person, so we're gonna need a lot to really make any appreciable difference.
> The wealthiest 1% of Americans controlled about $41.52 trillion in the first quarter, according to Federal Reserve data released Monday.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/23/how-much-wealth-top-1percent...
I've been in debt for over a decade. For some that money would be chicken feed, but for me it has ensured I'm in perpetual debt. I never have spending money. Wear clothes until they totally fall apart. Found a pair of shoes that I have repurposed. And sometimes have barely anything to eat for weeks. If I'm lucky I get to the pub once a year. Can't afford Christmas presents etc.
Then I read that Boris Johnson will struggle for a place to live when he retreats from being a prime minister where he struggles to live on his 200k salary. And in the following months earns 5 million for doing a a few speeches.
Some of us indeed can have nothing but never have to worry.
Society's not entitled to a working population, or a population at all. People are more than a means to an end, and if we have to burn down capitalism to prove it, I'll get my torch!
Otherwise, why should I have children? As a man, I stand only to lose from marriage and children. The legal and social atmosphere is all responsibility, no power or freedom.
Sounds to me like "us" and "elders" should get round the table and figure out a way to make having children more palatable.
I think it is pretty clear that employers must pay a fair wage.
If you work for a living but your income does not allow you to survive, let alone support kids, then your employer is failing to meet his end of the social contract.
It's entirely stupid how minimum wage simply does not cover the cost of existing, specially in times of record profits.
Being smart has negative evolutionary pressure: natural selection selects for animals that do not question whether or not they should have children.
http://www.art.net/studios/hackers/hopkins/Don/text/rms-vs-d...
The poor countries will reach the same when they develop.
If we reach 1/10th the size of the current population, then we can start to wonder about fertility rate if it drops further.
Your gametes are accumulating mutations every year you get older. If you actually want kids at some point, and you're in a position to have them, then you should do it soon, for the sake of their health.
For a variety of reasons, such lifestyles seem way less common today.
A bit off puffed grain draped in sugar with a sprinkle of vitamins, in a headache inducing substance doesn't sound like the best start for any kid.
But agree that it was a go to for me when getting back from school. But then again we starved ourselves to keep our dinner money when we were kids. And barely ate well at all. Pretty envious of those kids that had parents that cooked for them.
My second school had good food. If I had spent the money on a dinner I would have done much better than eating at home. My third school had crap food.
Envious looking back on those that had free school meals. This is in the UK. But this is years back, and I wouldn't be surprised if the quality of lunches has dwindled to nothing, or even if schools have canteens.
I visited a hospital a decade or so back, and it had a KFC on the concourse.
By that logic, having kids should be brutally expensive, as it's the absolute worst thing you could do for the environment.
If we're seriously talking about 'degrowth' at this point, a managed decline of human economic activity, then population degrowth - significantly reduced breeding - should be the top priority?
We have put off having kids and now have probably missed the fertility window, because we have never been financially in a position to support some. And it's a horrible pain for the pair of us.
If you see it as a financial transaction, it’s probably better to not have children.