Breakfast Cereals - are they that good for you ?
According to the explanations on the box, these cereals are "at the forefront" of nutrition: they take care of your figure and provide you with all the vitamins and minerals you need.
Breakfast cereals are a popular and convenient choice for many people, but their nutritional value can vary widely. Some breakfast cereals are high in sugar and refined carbs, which can be harmful to your health if consumed in excess. Other breakfast cereals are fortified with vitamins and minerals that supposedly help meet your daily needs.
However, fortification does not make up for a poor diet or replace the benefits of eating whole foods. A healthy breakfast cereal should ideally contain some protein and fibre from ingredients like oats, nuts, and seeds. These nutrients can help you feel full and prevent blood sugar spikes. You can also add fresh low sugar fruits like berries, live yoghurt, or milk to your cereal for extra nutrition and flavour.
Let’s look at how supermarket cereals are really made!
These cereals are mainly made from corn, wheat and rice.
1st step - Refining: the cereals are crushed or reduced to flour. They are often cooked for several hours.
2nd step - Mixing: manufacturers add other ingredients such as sugar, chocolate, water, colourings, preservatives ... Then they give the mixture a preliminary shape before the 2nd cooking which will brown and dry them. Some are puffed in the shape of grains (Rice Krispies), in balls (Honey Pops), or crushed to form petals (Corn Flakes).
3rd step - Extrusion: at high temperature, the dough is forced through moulding machines to obtain the desired final shape - rings, stars, cushions, balls. Certain cereals will have been filled to give them a "melting heart".
4th step - Icing and supplementation: at this stage, the cereals can be sprinkled again with sugar for the icing (Frosties), or with chocolate for a coating. Others are sprayed with a solution to fortify them with vitamins and minerals. This confirms that they were initially poor in nutrients[1].
Once packaged, they can be kept in the cupboard for several months ... especially thanks to the amount of sugar, an excellent preservative.
Too high in sugars
Needless to say, cereals are made up of carbohydrates and sugars, not to mention colours and preservatives. These refined carbohydrates break down into sugars the moment they reach your stomach.
So there is still some sugar… and some sugars!
But it's the added sugars that are the biggest problem in modern diets. Even if you cut out the sugar bowl, sugars are lurking everywhere, even in salty dishes. Sugar is responsible for overweight, uncontrolled appetite, obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and cancer [2] [3] [4].
It is therefore very unfortunate to find so much of it in children’s breakfast cereals which cannot be considered healthy foods, even if they come under the label “organic" or “traditional” as with Special K, the Country Store, Weetabix etc.
Sugar: instructions for use
Sugar provides your body with powerful, short-lived energy, similar to a whip. It should be used with reason for it to remain effective. If you feel tired in the middle of a physical effort, a honey cereal bar will immediately give you the energy you need to finish your task. It's like the jockey whipping his horse on the home stretch.
Any good rider knows that whipping his horse non-stop to keep him moving forward is counterproductive in the long run. It can injure the horse, making it hyper stressed and disobedient to riding without a riding crop.
Eating sugar without the need for immediate energy (intensive sport) is like whipping your horse so that it walks at a slow pace: it may run off at a gallop instead!
Your blood sugar level suddenly rises. Your pancreas races and secretes more insulin than it needs. This will turn the excess sugar into fat and bring your blood sugar level back below normal.
You then experience a drop in sugar (hypoglycemia), and your physical and mental energy levels plummet. You may have symptoms such as sweating, feeling tired, dizzy, weak, shaky or trembling with a fast or pounding heartbeat, feeling easily irritated, tearful, anxious, or moody. Your vigilance and concentration decreases, you are overcome by fatigue. You are hungry again.
It's a vicious circle. Especially since sugar boosts your secretion of dopamine, which makes you happy for a short time. Sugar works the same as cigarettes, drugs, and alcohol. Even, researchers have observed that sugar is more addictive than cocaine [5]!
Misleading health claims
This is why breakfast cereals are not a good way to "start the day well" or "to have energy all morning". In fact, the manufacturers have everything on the box: "At the office, take a break with Special K cereal bars" [6].
The opposite of what you and your children need:
Rather, you need a slowly and steadily releasing energy source to keep you full over time. I will give you some low-sugar breakfast ideas below.
Aware of their bad reputation, cereal boxes are littered with messages intended to give parents a good conscience: "Rich in fibre, vitamins and iron, less than 5% fat", "Your program to get your figure back" , “New whole grain recipe”. However, whatever vitamins (usually artificial) that manufacturers add to it, this is not enough to compensate for the bad effects of added sugars. Unfortunately, studies show that these claims are taken seriously by consumers [7] [8].
The only reliable information on these packages is the list of ingredients, and this always starts with refined grains and sugar.
Remember real healthy foods don't need health claims on their packaging.
Cereals mainly target children
What is most unfair is that grain vendors are experts in marketing to children.
Children can help themselves (no need to cook them). The cereals float in the milk. They are easy to eat with a spoon. They crunch under the teeth to give pleasant sensations. The multi-colored boxes are covered with designs with funny characters. There are comics to read, gift toys to collect.
In this game, even picky kids at the table flock to the Kellogg’s. Who could blame parents for giving in to the cereal department? This is why researchers consider food marketing to be a risk factor for obesity [9].
If You Really Must Buy Cereals, Here's How To Choose Them
Here are some tips for choosing the least unhealthy cereals:
Read the nutritional values on the box. Don't buy those that contain more than 5g of sugar per serving [10]. Look carefully at the list of ingredients because sugar can appear several times under different names: fructose-glucose syrup, sucrose ...
Everyone tends to fill their bowl. Know that the reference portion on the box will always be lower than what you eat spontaneously. Another marketing tip.
So weigh your portions because not all cereals are the same weight. To help reduce portions, use smaller bowls.
To avoid cravings, serve your cereals with protein and healthy fats such as nuts.
Replace the milk with Greek yogurt, again for more protein.
Make yourself a real breakfast. If you're ready to ditch breakfast cereals, here are my tips for a smooth transition to a filling, healthy breakfast. Your ultimate goal will be to eliminate cereals and the industrial milk that goes with them ...
Start by replacing cereals of wheat, corn, rice, with oatmeal - the breakfast of the mountain people.
You can eat them in porridge, boiled in milk. After a few days, try stopping the milk and cooking the flakes in water - the difference is not that obvious.
You can also eat them in muesli, raw with yogurt.
You can sweeten them with honey, but try putting nuts, chopped fruit, dried fruit - it's delicious.
Once you get used to it, replace some of the oatmeal with raw, edible seeds. There are many varieties. Many are rich in protein, omega-3 fatty acids, vitamins, and antioxidants. Try flax, chia (appetite suppressant), pumpkin, poppy seeds, etc.
Then alternate with half an avocado, a hard-boiled egg, fried eggs with onion, tomatoes, mushrooms, peppers. You can even 'dare' smoked fish like mackerel or salmon, but this will be easier if you are of northern European origins, although some Mediterranean people sometimes eat sardines or anchovies for breakfast.
After this transition, you will be amazed at your energy flow throughout the day. You won't even miss the cereals.
If you absolutely cannot do without cereals, opt for healthier alternatives to breakfast cereals in a box with organic (gluten free) oats, DIY muesli and granola, bran flakes, quinoa flakes, buckwheat groats, etc.
Sources:
[1] Iron and folate in fortified cereals
[2] Per capita sugar consumption and prevalence if diabetes mellitus - global and regional associations
[3] Adverse metabolic effects of dietary fructose: results from the recent epidemiological, clinical, and mechanistic studies
[4] Diet and breast cancer: the possible connection with sugar consumption
[5] Sugar addiction: pushing the drug-sugar analogy to the limit
[6] Special K Complete Cereals - Kellogg's
[7] The effects of nutrition labelling on consumer food choice: a psychological experiment and computational model
[8] Nutrition labels on pre-packaged foods: a systematic review
[9] Marketing of foods high in fat, salt and sugar to children: update 2012-2013
[10] Breakfast Cereals: Healthy or Unhealthy?
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