(Guide to a Healthy Lifestyle)

Beware of Your Child's Breakfast Cereal

I'd venture to say that if you are a typical American parent, you feed your children breakfast cereal. And I would venture even further that the breakfast cereal is more often than not a pre-sweetened variety.

Even if the cereal is not the kind with cartoon characters which shows that it is geared to and marketed for children, it yet contains maybe three or more types of sugar such as sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and malt flavoring.

Knowing that the average diet is lacking essential vitamins and minerals, cereal manufacturers fortify many of their brands. Most if not all added vitamins and minerals are synthetic rather than sourced from whole foods.

When you buy a breakfast cereal that is fortified with iron, I suspect that you wouldn't imagine in your wildest nightmare that the iron is actual metal iron filings. Yet this is what is in some breakfast cereals. Watch this video to see what unscrupulous manufacturers are putting in the cereals that you innocently give to your child!

It is unthinkable that cereal manufacturers would "enrich" or "fortify" their products with actual metal filings. But as you saw in this video, it is certainly the case.

The best way to feed your body the nutrients it needs is through whole foods. The iron filings in these cereals in not bioavailable. In other words, your body is not able to absorb them.

Your best source of bioavailable iron is:

• Grass-fed meat like beef or pork
• Wild-caught salmon
• Green, leafy vegetables like spinach, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, and asparagus
• dried beans such as lima, kidney, and black eye
• nuts and seeds such as almonds, cashews, sunflower seeds, and sesame seeds

If you find you do need to supplement with iron, avoid ferrous sulfate which can be very toxic; the safest kind of iron is "Feosol Carbonyl Iron" which you can buy at Costco or Targets. Even an accidental overdose of this iron is not toxic.

Many people do not absorb iron very well even from whole foods. Vitamin C helps the body to absorb it; but be aware that caffeine interferes with iron absorption.

Kellogg's Thinks Its Breakfast Cereals Are the Answer to Hunger in America

The USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) says that one out of every four child goes without breakfast in America. It seems that Kellogg is touched by that upsetting statistic, and wants to help.

Kellogg recently announced its Share Your Breakfast program. It is part of a national advertising campaign asking Americans to upload breakfast photos into its website shareyourbreakfast.com. For every photo submitted, Kellogg will donate a school breakfast to a child in need - up to $200,000 worth of breakfasts.

While it is laudable that Kellogg wants to help America's hungry, their idea of what constitutes a healthy breakfast would be hilarious if the situation were not so sad.

The donated breakfasts consist of their breakfast cereals -- processed junk food which will contribute to an already spiralling out of control obesity and health crisis. One of the products is the highly popular Frosted Flakes.

Kellogg's Frosted Flakes contains 11 grams of sugar per three-fourths cup serving. After the first ingredient of milled corn, the next three read: Sugar, malt flavoring, and high-fructose-corn-syrup -- three forms of sugar by different names. This means that sugar, malt flavoring, and high fructose corn syrup are the second, third, and fourth greatest quantities of ingredients in the cereal.

(And, the body will process the milled corn like it was sugar; natural corn is high on the glycemic index. In addition, milled corn is highly processed corn.)

Another product Kellogg considers a healthy breakfast is their Nutri-Grain bar. This product contains a "Who's Who?" list of synthetic chemicals including high fructose corn syrup, TBHQ (a petroleum derivative used as a preservative), artificial flavors, and red dye #40. In total, this product has over 30 ingredients!

In contrast to this absurd number of ingredients, in the '50s my mother baked three-layered birthday cakes made of sugar, flour, vanilla, milk, and eggs - that was about it!

In order to justify its position, Kellogg has dedicated a considerable amount of website real estate to "correcting" false nutrition information the public is being fed. The Kellogg company calls sugar the "misunderstood nutrient." According to the site, "Sugar does not cause obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease or hyperactivity."

The AHA (American Heart Association) website states: "High intake of added sugars is implicated in numerous poor health conditions, including obesity, high blood pressure and other risk factors for heart disease and stroke."

The AHA says the average woman should not consume more than six teaspoons of sugar a day and men no more than nine; many of Kellogg's products contain an average of 11 grams of sugar per serving which is nearly three teaspoons. The AHA says the average American eats an alarming 22 teaspoons of added sugar a day.

If the Kellogg company is so concerned with hunger in America rather than its bottom line, it would spend a good portion of its advertising budget (the New York Times says they spent $464.9 million on advertising from January through September, 2010) towards providing healthy, substantial breakfasts. As it now stands, Kellogg's product offerings contributes to rampant childhood obesity and cancer rates.
Source: Huffington Post.

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