Tuesday, December 29, 2009

The Most Important Meal of The Day

We've heard it since we were children, magazines and newspapers continue to shout it from the rooftops, but for some reason we like to ignore the old adage, and continue to skip breakfast. I may skip breakfast some mornings, but I make sure that my children get breakfast every morning. I have felt some guilt in the past that their breakfast is rarely homemade and usually consists of a bowl of cereal with milk, but not anymore!

Research has shown that those that eat ready to eat cereal for breakfast consume less fat, less cholesterol and more fiber than those who do not.

Other benefits of choosing ready to eat cereal for breakfast include:
  • Ready-to-eat cereals, including presweetened cereals, account for only 5% of sugar in children’s diets.

  • Ready-to-eat cereal is the No. 1 source of whole grains in a child’s diet today.

  • More frequent cereal eaters tend to have healthier body weights and lower Body Mass Index measures.
General Mills recently announced that they will begin to reduce the sugar per serving content of all of their cereals that are marketed to children under the age of 12 to single digit numbers! In past years General Mills has also been increasing the content of vital nutrients and decreasing the sugar content of their cereals. Actions like these help me as a mother to feel better about choosing cereal as my children's breakfast on busy school mornings.

Right now General Mills is offering a coupon for $1 off one of four of their cereals. Click here to print yours.

If you would like to read more about cereal and children's health, you can go to the General Mills website where they provide you with more data.


This post is part of a program by My Blog Spark. I received coupons, online coupon link, and information from General Mills through MyBlogSpark. Any opinions expressed are completely my own.

4 comments:

Connie said...

If there's cereal in the house, then there's time for breakfast! That seems to be the favorite breakfast of most of my kids! Glad GM is lowering the sugar. Now, if I can just keep the sugar bowl off the table, we'll be good!
Thanks for the coupon info.

skip said...

Christine--Very sorry to say that with respect to the Word of Wisdom as a guide to health, General Mills may qualify as the great Satan. Their guidance must be considered suspect.

If you want to feed your family a healthy breakfast, use this guide to select a cereal:

1. The grains (on ingredient list) must be whole.
2. The grams of fiber (in nutrition information) must be more than the grams of sugar.

By this Word of Wisdom-based standard, 95% of cereals fail the test. Those that pass include Quaker Old Fashioned Oatmeal, Post Shredded Wheat (only ingredient is wheat). There are others--General Mills may even have one or two.

Regarding added sugars, particularly high fructose corn syrup--you should protect your children by avoiding them. Adding fruit to the family cereal will provide adequate sweetness plus a whole host of other phytonutrients that are good for you.

It is true that General Mills has been improving the healthiness of their cereals but that may not be any better than going from 11 cigarettes a day to 10. (I believe their sugar reduction was from 11 to 10 grams per serving, still an unhealthy amount and not much of an improvement.)

Thought you would want to know.

Love, Uncle Skip

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