| I know personal trainers and nutritionists always recommend rolled oats or special K and things like that but I want to eat nice cereals so can you tell me what I should be looking for to still stay healthy. Great question! Provided you look closely at the nutrition panel and ingredients list you can certainly make some great cereal choices. Here are some guidelines. SUGAR Aim for no more than 10g of sugar per 100g. (10% sugars). For a 45g serving this would be no more than 4.5g, or a 30g serve should have no more than 3g of sugar. Look for where the sugar comes from on the ingredients list, is there a lot of added sugar (will be listed as sugar, corn syrup, high fructose corn syryp...and most words ending in -ose) FAT Great if the fat is coming from things like nuts and seeds, not so great if it's from added fat. Again aim for no more than 10% of the cereal being fat. Avoid cereals with the words hydrogenated, and trans fats on the nutrition panel or ingredients list. Avoid them like the plague, they contribute to heart disease. PROTEIN Not really an issue. Cereal is not designed to fuel our protein needs, any protein in cereal is just a small token bonus. FIBRE Go for a high fibre cereal. There are no minimum standards, just compare the 100g panels with each box to see which has the best amount of fibre. LOW PROCESSING This kind of goes hand in hand with fibre. The more processed and refined a grain is, the less fibre it will have. Have a look at the cereal, does it look like the original (eg, do cocoa pops really look like rice and do fruit loops look anything like wheat?). Aim for cereals that look like cereal. SERVING SIZE Always stick to the serving size on the box. Measure it, weigh it, do what you need to do to show yourself that you may have been overeating those yummy cereals. Try making your own toasted muesli, then you can control what goes in it, and even better still, you can control the taste! Stacey 18 Feb 2010 |
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