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Are Fortified Children’s Breakfast Cereals Just Candy?

The AHA! Team — Mon, 13 May 2024 08:02:54 +0000

Michael Greger M.D. FACLM via Nutrition Facts – The industry responds to the charge that breakfast cereals are too sugary. In 1941, the American Medical Association’s Council on Foods and Nutrition was presented with a new product, Vi-Chocolin, a vitamin-fortified chocolate bar, “offered ostensibly as a specialty product of high nutritive value and of some use in medicine, but in reality, intended for promotion to the public as a general-purpose confection, a vitaminized candy.” Surely, something like that couldn’t happen today, right? Unfortunately, that’s the sugary cereal industry’s business model. As I discuss in my video Are Fortified Kids’ Breakfast Cereals Healthy or Just Candy?, nutrients are added to breakfast cereals “as a marketing gimmick to “create an aura of healthfulness…If those nutrients were added to soft drinks or candy, would we encourage kids to consume them more often?” Would we feed our kids Coke and Snickers for breakfast? We might as well spray cotton candy with vitamins, too. As one medical journal editorial read, “Adding vitamins and minerals to sugary cereals…is worse than useless. The subtle message accompanying such products is that it is safe to eat more.” General Mills’ “Grow up strong with Big G kids’ cereals” ad campaign featured products like Lucky Charms, Trix, and Cocoa Puffs. That’s like the dairy industry promoting ice cream as a way to get your calcium. Kids who eat presweetened breakfast cereals may get more than 20 percent of their daily calories from added sugar, as you can see below and at 1:28 in my video. Most sugar in the American diet comes from beverages like soda, but breakfast cereals represent the third largest food source of added sugars in the diets of children and adolescents, wedged between candy and ice cream. On a per-serving basis, there is more added sugar in a cereal like Frosted Flakes than there is in frosted chocolate cake, a brownie, or even a frosted donut, as you can see below and at 1:48 in my video. Kellogg’s and General Mills argue that breakfast cereals only contribute a “relatively small amount” of sugar to the diets of children, less than soda, for example. “This is a perfect example of the social psychology phenomenon of ‘diffusion of responsibility.’ This behavior is analogous to each restaurant in the country arguing that it should not be required to ban smoking because it alone contributes only a tiny fraction to Americans’ exposure to secondhand smoke.” In fact, “each source of added sugar…should be reduced.” The industry argues that most of their cereals have less than 10 grams of sugar per serving, but when Consumer Reports measured how much cereal youngsters actually poured for themselves, they were found to serve themselves about 50 percent more than the suggested serving size for most of the tested cereals. The average portion of Frosted Flakes they poured for themselves contained 18 grams of sugar, which is 4½ teaspoons or 6 sugar packets’ worth. It’s been estimated that a “child eating one serving per day of a children’s cereal containing the average amount of sugar would consume nearly 1,000 teaspoons of sugar in a year.” Breakfast cereals rank as the third-largest food source of added sugars in the diets of kids General Mills offers the “Mary Poppins defense,” arguing that those spoonsful of sugar can “help the medicine go down” and explaining that “if sugar is removed from bran cereal, it would have the consistency of sawdust.” As you can see below and at 3:17 in my video, a General Mills representative wrote that the company is presented “with an untenable choice between making our healthful foods unpalatable or refraining from advertising them.” If it can’t add sugar to its cereals, they would be unpalatable? If one has to add sugar to a product to make it edible, that should tell us something. That’s a characteristic of so-called ultra-processed foods, where you have to pack them full of things like sugar, salt, and flavorings “to give flavor to foods that have had their [natural] intrinsic flavors processed out of them and to mask any unpleasant flavors in the final product.” The president of the Cereal Institute argued that without sugary cereals, kids might not eat breakfast at all. (This is similar to dairy industry arguments that removing chocolate milk from school cafeterias may lead to students “no longer purchasing school lunch.”) He also stressed we must consider the alternatives. As Kellogg’s director of nutrition once put it: “I would suggest that Fruit [sic] Loops as a snack are much better than potato chips or a sweet roll.” You know there’s a problem when the only way to make your product look good is to compare it to Pringles and Cinnabon. Want a healthier option? Check out my video Which Is a Better Breakfast: Cereal or Oatmeal?. For more on the effects of sugar on the body and if you like these more politically charged videos see the related posts below. Finally, for some additional videos on cereal, see Kids’ Breakfast Cereals as Nutritional Façade and Ochratoxin in Breakfast Cereals. Key Takeaways Vi-Chocolin, a vitamin-fortified chocolate bar, was purportedly offered as a product with high nutritive value but was really just vitaminized candy. The sugary cereal industry follows a similar business model. The sugary cereal industry has been criticized for adding nutrients to cereals “as a marketing gimmick,” creating an illusion of health benefits. Children who consume pre-sweetened breakfast cereals may derive more than 20 percent of their daily calories from added sugar. Breakfast cereals rank as the third-largest food source of added sugars in the diets of kids and adolescents, listed between candy and ice cream. On a per-serving basis, a cereal like Frosted Flakes has more added sugar than a frosted chocolate cake, a brownie, or a frosted donut. Kellogg’s and General Mills’ contention that breakfast cereals contribute only a “relatively small amount” of sugar to children’s diets is likened to the social psychology phenomenon of “diffusion of responsibility.” Consumer Reports’ findings reveal that children often pour themselves 50 percent more cereal than the suggested serving size. A child eating a single daily serving of kids’ cereal with the average amount of sugar would consume almost a thousand teaspoons of sugar in one year. The industry argues it has to add sugar to its cereals to make them palatable, which is a characteristic of ultra-processed foods. To read the original article click here.

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Obesity Hits New Milestone Largely Due to Sugar Consumption

AHA Publisher — Thu, 22 Apr 2021 07:00:25 +0000

Lorie Johnson via CBN News – More than 42% of US adults are now obese, making it the first time in history the national rate has passed the 40% mark, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which points out the steep and rapid rise of this serious health condition. In 1999 the obesity rate was a much lower 30%. Obesity in adults is defined as a BMI greater than or equal to 30. BMI stands for body mass index and is a measure of body fat based on height and weight that applies to men and women. A person can calculate their BMI on the National Institutes of Health website. The number of people classified as severely obese has also jumped from 4.7% to 9/2% since 1999. Severe obesity as a BMI of 40 or more. Meanwhile, the number of overweight Americans, those with a BMI between 25 and 29.9, stands at 31.1%. This means in total, almost three out of every four Americans is above what health professionals consider a healthy weight. It’s Likely All That Sugar According to the American Heart Association, men should consume no more than nine teaspoons, or 37 grams, of added sugar a day while women, based on their smaller size, should consume no more than six teaspoons, or 25 grams. However, most Americans consume three times the recommended amount of sugar, perhaps without even realizing it. That adds up to approximately 60 pounds a year for adults and believe it or not, many children consume more sugar than grown-ups, an estimated 65 pounds a year. Sugar-sweetened beverages are the biggest source of added sugar in the American diet. Kids consume about 30 gallons of liquid sugar a year, enough to fill a bathtub! Kids and adults alike consume high sugar sodas as well as deceptively sweet fruit juices, sport, and energy drinks. Even tea and coffee can be loaded with sugars. Some popular coffee shop drinks contain 14 teaspoons of sugar, almost two days’ worth. Aside from beverages, other high sugar items include baked goods, ice cream, and candy. Clinical Psychiatrist Uma Naidoo, M.D., author of the book, This is Your Brain on Food told CBN News said these foods admittedly make people happy when they eat them but many don’t realize in doing so they are consuming an entire day’s allotment of sugar in one small treat. “They do feel that uplifting feeling for a few minutes,” she said, “But the problem is these long-term effects.” These include Type 2 diabetes and heart disease as well as some cancers and brain disorders. “Sugar has been shown in several research studies to worsen depression, to worsen anxiety,” Dr. Naidoo said, “And is associated with brain atrophy and dementia.” Disguised as Healthy Most people realize candy and soda contain sugar, but might be surprised to learn seemingly healthy foods contain just as much if not more. Some examples include protein bars, barbeque sauce, yogurt, ketchup and nutritional drinks aimed at the elderly, baked beans, and much more. In fact, health experts say most processed foods are laden with sugar, including those that don’t seem sweet. Molly Carmel learned that first hand. She told CBN News that after tipping the scale at 325 pounds, she realized she learned to identify and avoid all forms of sugar. “Sugar is a tricky, tricky, tricky little abuser because it really is everywhere,” she said, “I gave up ketchup, I gave up teriyaki sauce, I gave up a lot of salad dressings.” In her book Breaking Up with Sugar, she describes how she dropped the weight and kept it off for more than ten years. Become a Savvy Shopper Carmel says in order to identify whether a product contains sugar don’t just look for the word “sugar” on the list of ingredients. Food manufacturers use dozens of different types of sugar. Many end in the letters “ose” such as fructose and dextrose. Other examples of added sugar include syrup, molasses, cane juice, and fruit juice concentrate. Sometimes to avoid making any particular type of sugar one of the first ingredients listed, they will add small amounts of many different types of sugar to a product. The best way to learn how many added sugars a product contains is to read the Nutrition Facts panel which lists how many grams of added sugar is in each serving. However, read that Nutrition Facts panel closely, paying particular attention to a product’s serving size. Food manufacturers try to make a product seem healthier by reducing the serving size, sometimes to ridiculously small portions, much smaller than a person typically eats. For example, a high-sugar granola producer lists its serving size on the Nutrition Facts panel as one-fourth of a cup, which is only about three bites! The average person actually eats more than one cup of granola at a sitting. Therefore, to get an accurate idea of the product’s sugar content, multiply the amount of sugar in the serving size by four. To read the original article click here. For more articles from CBN News click here.

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