sugar and salt in kids breakfast cereals

L

LMNOP

Registered User
Messages
76
Why do most children’s cereals have such a high sugar + salt content?
Drives me nuts.

Aside from weetabix and shredded wheat (which still contain some salt/sugar), rice crispies are the best of a bad bunch, but there is not much in them.

There must be a market for a low sugar/salt interesting kids cereal? I remember picking up a babies orange cereal once and i couldnt believe how sweet it was. It was aimed from 4 months!
Porridge is good, but I’m afraid to overdo it and turn them off it for life.

ideas welcome
 
The problem may be that to make them interesting for kids you have to add sugar? You could try adding a bit of fruit and stuff to the boring cereals to jazz them up a bit, I'm sure there's plenty of recipies out there.
 
Shredded wheat has nothing added (I saw the ad) and there is always the old reliable oatmeal.
 
Try getting them to eat a Museli product without added sugar/salt. Chop a banana over it.
There can't be too much bad in cornflakes either if you mix that in. Tesco do value versions of both.

One thing I've noticed from looking at the labels is that sometimes the value product is healthier than the so called healthy version.
 
GeneralZod said:
Try getting them to eat a Museli product without added sugar/salt. Chop a banana over it.
There can't be too much bad in cornflakes either if you mix that in. Tesco do value versions of both.

One thing I've noticed from looking at the labels is that sometimes the value product is healthier than the so called healthy version.
Click to expand...

Um, hate to tell you, but ripe bananas are about 27% sugar by weight.
http://www.inibap.org/index.php?page=home->bp->nut
They do have other advantages of course in terms of vitamins and minerals.

The reason that baby food is loaded with sugar is that babies would starve without it. Breastmilk is also loaded with sugar (and fat).

Agree with you about the salt, though. Totally too much in everything.

And with what GeneralZod says about the value version of Tesco products being more healthy (although strangely often more expensive when you work it out by weight - but that's a different thread!).
 
yoganmahew said:
Um, hate to tell you, but ripe bananas are about 27% sugar by weight.
http://www.inibap.org/index.php?page=home->bp->nut
They do have other advantages of course in terms of vitamins and minerals.
Click to expand...

According to this bananas are actually 75% water and 12.5% sugar by weight. Admittedly a fair chunk of the carbs are sugar but there's also fibre. The sugar presumably isn't all the highly refined mix (mainly sucrose?) used in the cereals. Bananas are healthy I hope you'll agree. Plus in the morning you are supposed to take in more sugar just not an outrageous percentage of it.

Just looked at my box of cornflakes and it is about 30% sugar which is disturbing. When I bought it that was the low sugar version.
 
GeneralZod said:
According to this bananas are actually 75% water and 12.5% sugar by weight. Admittedly a fair chunk of the carbs are sugar but there's also fibre. The sugar presumably isn't all the highly refined variety used in the cereals. Bananas are healthy I hope you'll agree.

Just looked at my box of cornflakes and it is about 30% sugar which is disturbing.
Click to expand...

I bow to your superior website, but if you put in a serving size of 100g it gives 23g of carbohydrates, of which 12g is sugar and 3g fibre, which leaves 8g to be starch. As both sugar and starch are digestible sugars bananas contain 20% digestible sugar/starch. (http://www.pamf.org/health/toyourhealth/carbs.html)

I agree that bananas are healthy, though as they have vitamins and minerals in them, but many breakfast cereals are fortified with both.

As far as I know, there is no difference in the way the body absorbes 'natural' and 'refined' sugars. Both are converted to glucose and used as energy or then converted to fat and stored (if they are excess).
 
I'm clearly straying off my expertise here but I've reliably read that the body has to do a bit more work processing starch than simple carbs (sugars). There isn't much starchy food in typical kids breakfast cereal so I'd classify all of the starch as good going by the daily recommended amounts. Also could you bow to the importance of the fibre content too :)

I accept what you say about the sugars, although perhaps the banana is giving a fuller spread of the various types of sugar.
 
GeneralZod said:
I'm clearly straying off my expertise here but I've reliably read that the body has to do a bit more work processing starch than simple carbs (sugars). There isn't much starchy food in typical breakfast cereal so I'd classify all of the starch as good going by the daily recommended amounts. Also could you bow to the importance of the fibre content too :)
Click to expand...
It's only gut bacteria that have to do more work!

Oh come now, it's only 3% fibre! Still, that is 10% of the RDA, so yes I agree that is also good - especially if it is on top of muesli as you suggest :)

Back to the OPs question - readybrek is low in salt anyway, but we could never get ours to eat it without a spoon of jam in it, which kind of defeats the purpose you are looking for (personally I wouldn't be too hung up on the sugar content of breakfast cereals - I'd be more worried about petit filous, yoghurt drinks, excessive amounts of fruit juice etc. (I'm assuming you have no truck with fizzy drinks;)).
 
I do the same with porridge, add a spoon of honey. yes its sugar, but surely a better start to the day that a bowel of coco pops?
Are natural sugars from fruit any better that the sugars from kids cereals? At least they are getting extra nutrition from the fruit.
I know sugars are essential yoganmahew, I suppose my gripe is the lack of choice in the off the shelf stuff.
The salt thing, Im surprised more is not being done about highlighting the dangers of a diet high in salt, especially in kids.
Anyway, thanks for your input.
 
Isn't there a big difference (in terms of metabolising them for example) between sucrose and fructose? Is the latter considered "better" in general? Lower GI and all that...
 
ClubMan said:
Isn't there a big difference (in terms of metabolising them for example) between sucrose and fructose? Is the latter considered "better" in general? Lower GI and all that...
Click to expand...

AFAIK Sucrose is normal sugar. Fructose is a broken down form of this similar to glucose. these two are blood sugars, sucrose on the other hand, is not and needs to be broken into glucose and fructose. So the pancreas and liver needs to work hard.
Also afaik you're right when you say fructose is better because it's a natually accuring blood sugar in fruits and some vegetables with the lower GI and it's twice as sweet as Sugar so can be taken in half the quantity of sugar (sucrose).
Sucrose raises the blood sugar rapidy and can lead to diabetes and/or obesity. whereas fructose is less likely to do this. (Although it can lead to high uric acids).

This is all from memory i'm sure it's on google/wiki in more detail.
 
when I gave my young one an instant meal from Bia for Kids (or similar name) she commented, wow this tastes like real food. They have much less salt that most instant dinners - even those claiming to have -REDUCED SALT. I wish they'd make adult versions! It takes 2 to feed me! (I have no connection with this company)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top