22 January 2009
On cereal
There’s something you should know.
I love cereal.
I unabashedly, passionately love cereal. I used to joke (or, “joke”) that I wanted to serve it as my wedding reception with individual silver pitchers of milk (keeping it classy).
But as I learned more and more about eating well, I realized that eating the wrong cereal is sort of like eating caloric air. The wrong cereal has no nutritional value, just calories and sugar. It’s tricky because a lot cereals these days are intensely fortified, which basically means that the producers throw in a lot of non-naturally occurring nutrients so they can say on the box that such and such cereal provides “50% of your Recommended Daily Value of vitamin XYZ!!!!!” Really, you should be getting your vitamins and minerals from where they naturally occur if possible.
So how do you know the good from the bad when it comes to those clusters, flakes, and O’s? Let the nutritionista help you out.
Look for a cereal with at LEAST 5 grams of protein per serving. You need protein in the morning to get you going and keep you from being hungry again an hour after eating. Grain has naturally-occuring protein, so if you pick the right cereal, you’re good to go. A lot of cereals don’t even meet this minimum requirement (Cheerios? Nope. Total? Nope. Wheaties? NOPE!).
Look for a cereal with at LEAST 4-5 grams of fiber per serving. Why fiber? Well, why NOT fiber? Fiber is filling (good) because it slows the rate that sugar is absorbed into the bloodstream and prevents glucose from spiking (bad). Fiber helps keep things, um, moving down there. Most people don’t get their RDV of fiber (25-30 grams is generally recommended) and breakfast is a good place to get some of it. The above cereals top out at 3 grams of fiber per serving.
So where can I find this magical cereal? Well, kids, I’ll tell you what I eat: KASHI. KASHI, KASHI, KASHI. Their original GoLean cereal is a pinnacle of nutrition with a whopping 13 grams of protein and 10 grams of fiber. GoLean Crunch, otherwise known as crack by many of my friends and as “gravel rocks”* by my loving boyfriend, has 9 grams of protein and 8 grams of fiber and comes in original AND honey almond flax. You don’t even KNOW about flax yet!
Anyway, when I eat cereal for breakfast, you can usually bet it’s Kashi of some form or another. If anyone has another cereal suggestion that fits the above criteria, HOLLER: yournutritionista@gmail.com.
*I don’t think it tastes like gravel rocks. It tastes like sunshine and rainbows.
