I want The Daughter to eat well, but if she wants an occasional box of Kellogg’s Froot Loops, a “sweetened multi-grain cereal,” I might buy it if it’s on sale. The Wife was complaining that she had made that choice for breakfast when she replied that it was healthier than the Kellogg’s Raisin Bran I was eating. Let’s look at the side panels:
SERVING SIZE: 1 cup (FL-29 g, RB-59g)
Calories: FL-110, RB-190. Advantage, FL.
Saturated fat: 0.5g, RB-0g. Advantage RB.
Sodium: FL 135 mg, RB-210mg. Advantage, FL.
Potassium: FL-35mg, RB-390mg. Big advantage, RB.
Total carbohydrates: FL-26g, RB-46g. Advantage, FL.
Dietary fiber: FL-3g, RB-7g. Advantage-RB.
Protein: FL-1g, RB-5g. Advantage-RB.
Then it’s all those minimum daily requirement percentages.
Most of them are the same, with these exceptions:
Vitamin C: FL-25%, RB-0%. Big advantage, FL, although it’s undoubtedly some additive.
Calcium: FL-0%, RB-2%. Small advantage-RB.
Phosphorus and magnesium: FL-0%, RB-20% each. Advantage: RB.
Zinc: FL-0%, RB-10%. Advantage-RB.
Finally, it’s the ingredients. Froot Loops’ first ingredient is sugar. The second is corn flour blend (whole grain yellow corn flour, degerminated yellow corn flour); the first sounds OK, but the other? It has a lot of items I’m not exactly sure what they are, especially for the coloring. Raisin Bran starts with whole grain wheat, raisins, wheat bran before it gets to sugar.
I’ll still suggest that the Raisin Bran is probably the better choice than the Froot Loops, but not so much better as I thought.
I have to strictly watch sodium, so I give myself permission to eat Double Chocolate Krave. Which is actually my favorite cereal right now. Surprisingly, some more “healthful” cereals (Grape-Nuts, I’m lookin’ at YOU) are quite high in sodium by comparison.
I love cereal, but it doesn’t love me back, so I’ve had to pull back from it a lot over the years. Also, I’m becoming a little more lactose intolerant, like my mother and my sister. In the organic section of my grocery I found some cereals I really like, something called EnviroKidz, I think, and they taste really, really good and don’t give me any problems, especially if I use soy milk. There are so many old standbys of my diet that I’ve been having to drop for health reasons.
The box art you posted is pretty neat, but Fruity Lupus doesn’t sound like what I want for breakfast…
Not at all shocked by this revelation. All those choices on the supermarket shelf? Not so different after all.
LOL! Are you going to switch to something more healthy? 🙂 Or maybe you’ll become a FL fan and she’ll have to share?!