Many people think that new-age diseases such as diabetes and cancer are usually linked to an unhealthy lifestyle including the foods we eat. You try to be healthy. You are told that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, so you start off your day with a bowl of cereal, skim milk, a glass of apple juice, and perhaps some fruit, or yogurt, or toast. That all seems pretty healthy… or is it?

Let’s take a look at cereal first.

Many boxes of cereal use words like “Made with Whole Grain”, or “Low Cholesterol”, however you should always check the labels of everything you consume, not just for calories and fat, but for sugars!

How much cereal does a normal person eat? Everyone I know eats a normal-sized cereal bowl full to the top and sometimes even has seconds! I used to do that too. It takes quite a bit of the stuff to fill you! Well let’s take a look at the nutrition label and find out what we are supposed to eat… according to the manufacturers, that is.

Let’s use Honey Nut Cheerios as an example, but take a look for yourself on the nutrition label of any cereal box of your choice. For now we’ll look at this one together.

The first red circle shows that one serving should be 3/4 of a cup. 3/4 of a cup?? Who eats that little cereal?? Even one cup isn’t enough to fill a bowl… we tried it!

The second circle shows the amount of sugar inside. 9 grams. Doesn’t sound so bad. Did you know that 4grams of sugar = 1 teaspoon? So basically there is approximately 2 teaspoons of sugar for every 3/4 cup of Honey Nut Cheerios.

Here the picture shows 3/4 cup of cereal. Below is a regular size cereal bowl, after we poured in 3/4 cup of cereal. It isn’t even half full!

So what’s the point (You’re probably asking)? Let’s do the math. Let’s say you pour yourself a full normal bowl of cereal.

That is about 4 times the suggested serving amount. So 4x 3/4.

We said that there are 1 teaspoon of sugar for every 4 grams. So 9grams x 4(servings)= 36grams. Now let’s see how many teaspoons of sugar that is… 36 divided by 4= 9 teaspoons of sugar, plus the amount of sugar in your milk, as well as the sugar from your juice. What if you have a second bowl of cereal?

The scary part is that Honey Nut Cheerios aren’t even that bad when it comes to sugars as a lot of other cereals are. Do the research yourself. And this is just the sugar we’re talking about.

How about the sodium, as well as the calories? 110 calories for ever 3/4 cup x 4 (for approximately a full, normal sized cereal bowl) = 440 calories! This is without the milk and the other breakfast items we mentioned! As for the sodium… 170mg x 4 = 680mg of sodium! That seems like a lot!

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