Cereal for Breakfast – What Are You Feeding Your Kids
It isn’t uncommon to serve up a bowl of cereal for breakfast. I am guilty, it is fast and easy but is it healthy? That is the dilemma… when it comes to cereal for children, according to a recent Yale study; the children are exposed to the least healthy breakfast cereals.
According to the study:
Cereals marketed to children have 85% more sugar, 65% less fiber and 60% more sodium than cereals marketed to adults for adult consumption. In addition, 42% of the child-targeted cereals contain artificial food dyes compared to 26% of family cereals and 5% of adult cereals.
Check out http://cerealfacts.org for more information or see where your cereal ranks and what the best brand is at http://cerealfacts.org/media/Marketing_Rankings/Brand_Nutrition.pdf
So who was labeled as the Worst offender? General Mills
Just a little food for thought when you are serving up your next breakfast. I know my kid gets enough sugar and it wouldn’t hurt to cut some of it out of her diet. It is easy to track with the candy and fruit snacks but breakfast is an easy meal to forget about when it comes to sugar. BTW: Kellogg and Post had better ratings. Over all it looks like if you want your kids to eat healthy cereal serve them up the cereal marketed to adults. It isn’t all bad… right?
2 comments:
My children are unaccustomed to sugary cereals at home; they know that large amounts of sugar are bad for them. We also limit soda to one day a week (Friday). This makes it a nice treat and not an expectation. Hopefully my children are healthier for it and are forming lifelong habits. My mom started the tradition for me.
I love Friday's that too is my soda day. I was just really suprised to find how bad cereals are for kids that are kids cereal. Madalyn does just fine with cheerios and other adult type cereals.
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