Eat This, Not That’: 4 worst breakfast foods at the supermarket

WORST FROZEN BREAKFASTJimmy Dean Breakfast Bowls: Pancakes and Syrup and Sausage Links (1 bowl)
710 calories
34 g fat (12 g saturated)
1,000 mg sodium
35 g sugars

Calorie equivalent: 12 Dunkin’ Donuts Sugared Munchkins

Pancakes and sausage are the dastardly duo of the breakfast table. One loads you down with saturated fat, and the other is a sponge for the liquid sugar we know as syrup. Eat this thing for breakfast and you’re taking in more sugar than a Snickers bar and a paltry 12 grams of protein. Or you can switch to the bowl below. It has a third as many calories, a quarter as much saturated fat, and nearly twice as much protein. That means it will fight hunger even better than the pancakes and sausage, but it will eliminate 480 calories from your morning routine. Do that every day and you’ll lose nearly a pound a week.

Eat This Instead!Jimmy Dean D-lights Turkey Sausage Bowl (1 bowl)
230 calories
7 g fat (3 g saturated)
700 mg sodium
1 g sugars

WORST CEREALKashi Summer Berry Granola (1 cup with ½ cup 2% milk)
505 calories
14.5 g fat (3.5 g saturated)
24 g sugars
14 g fiber

Calorie equivalent: 17 Nabisco Ginger Snap Cookies
Kashi’s Summer Berry Granola has 18 grams of sugar per cup, which — unless it’s coming from fruit — is more than you should ever see on your breakfast table. The company’s GoLean, on the other hand, is one of the best cereals in the supermarket, boasting nearly twice as much fiber as sugar. Plus it has 13 grams of protein, whereas the granola blend has only 6. More fiber plus more protein equals less hunger and a smaller belly. That’s simple nutritional arithmetic.

Eat This Instead!Kashi GoLean Original (1 cup with ½ cup 2% milk)
205 calories
3.5 g fat (1.5 g saturated)
12 g sugars
10 g fiber

WORST BAKED GOODEntenmanns’s Single Serve Iced Honey Bun (1 bun)
660 calories
38 g fat (22 g saturated)
34 g sugars

Saturated fat equivalent: 22 strips of bacon

Take a second look at that saturated fat count. 22 grams. That’s absurd. What’s equally egregious is the fact that this pastry has more sugar than two full-size Klondike Bars. You couldn’t design a worst breakfast. If you absolutely must have a sweet pastry to jumpstart your morning, then go with a plain doughnut. Not only do you save 470 calories, but you also cut your fat by more than two-thirds, your saturated fat by more than three-fourths, and your sugar by nearly 80 percent. It’s not exactly nutritious, but thanks to a modest serving size, the damage is minimal. Wash it down with a glass of milk and you’ve just earned a few grams of protein to boot.

Eat This Instead!Entenmann’s Plain Donut (1 donut)
190 Calories
11 g fat (5 g saturated)
7 g sugar

WORST TOASTER FOODThomas’ Blueberry Bagel (1 bagel with 2 oz cream cheese)
465 calories
21 g fat (11.5 g saturated)
620 mg sodium
56 g carbohydrates
13 g sugars

Calorie equivalent: 5.5 (1-cup) bowls of HoneyComb cereal

The bagel is a nutritional zero. Even if it were loaded with blueberries, it would still be a waste of calories, but as it is, blueberries are merely there to make you feel better about starting your day with a glorified pastry. Scan the ingredient list and you’ll find blueberries near the bottom, beneath 15 other ingredients like sugar, corn syrup, preservatives, and modified food starch. Instead, look to Thomas’ English muffins. They’re portioned perfectly to rope healthier foods into your morning routine without strapping a bagel belt around your belly. You can stuff them with ham and eggs for a quick, protein-packed breakfast, or you can swipe on some peanut butter for a quick boost of fiber, protein, and healthy fat.

Eat This Instead!Thomas’ English Muffins, Original made with Whole Grains (1 muffin with 2 Tbsps peanut butter)
320 calories
17 g fat (3 g saturated)
355 mg sodium
32 g carbohydrates
4 g sugars

Source: Dave Zinczenko, author of "Eat This, Not That!

Cereal May Be a Very Good Breakfast Choice

Thu, Jul 1 2010
By

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - You needn't feel guilty if you don't cook hot breakfasts for your kids. In a recent large study of children that compared breakfast-skippers, cereal eaters, and kids who had "other" breakfasts, the cereal-eaters came out on top for healthiest diets.

Regardless of whether their breakfasts were relatively high or low in sugar, the cereal eaters did not consume more than the daily recommended amount.

The breakfast skippers, on the other hand, got more of their daily energy from "added sugars" than breakfast eaters and ended up with less fiber, fewer nutrients, and the smallest percent of their daily energy provided by protein.

They also ended up with larger waists and a higher BMI (body mass index) than their breakfast-eating counterparts, on average.

Skipping breakfast not only starts the day off on the wrong foot nutritionally, but can set kids up for tough health challenges in years to come, the researchers say in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association. Larger waist size, for example, is a risk factor for diabetes, even in children and adolescents.

Ready-to-eat cereals sometimes get a bum rap because some of them have high sugar contents, study co-author Carol O'Neil of Louisiana State University told Reuters Health. But "many are high in nutrients, vitamin fortified, made with whole grains, with fiber added," she said.

Twenty-two percent of breakfast skippers were obese, compared to just under 20 percent of the "other breakfast" eaters and 15 percent of the cereal eaters.

The researchers analyzed everything the kids ate over a 24-hour period. While they didn't specifically calculate how much of total daily nutrients came from breakfast, they found that kids who ate ready-to-eat cereals had "more favorable nutrient intake profiles" and healthier weights than either the breakfast skippers or kids who ate "other breakfasts."

O'Neil and her colleagues studied nearly 10 thousand kids between the ages of 9 and 18 who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) between 1999 and 2006.

They found that 20 percent of children between the ages of nine and 13 and nearly a third of kids from 14 to 18 were skipping breakfast.

The numbers of kids who ate breakfast began to drop off as children got older, and by the time they were in high school, nearly a third were skipping breakfast.

A third of older girls skipped breakfast, the authors found. "Ironically, one of their concerns is about weight so they think they'll skip this meal and get fewer calories during the day when in reality they skip the meal, they're hungry and they start snacking on this, that, and the other, and overall they tend to eat more calories and fewer nutrient-dense foods," O'Neil said.

Kids don't realize that ready-to-eat cereals provide a quick and easy way to get a good breakfast, she added.
"One of the things that needs to be explored now is why so many children skip breakfast and why so many older children skip breakfast," O'Neil said.

She and her colleagues found that a higher percentage of children and adolescents from single-parent or low-income households skipped breakfast. They also found that ready-to-eat cereal consumption was lower in minority kids than in white kids. At least one earlier study has shown than access and availability of healthy foods, including fortified ready-to-eat cereals, are lower for blacks than for whites, the researchers say.

The research was funded by the US Department of Agriculture and Kellogg's Corporate Citizenship Fund.

SOURCE: Rachael Myers Lowe, link.reuters.com/fyw35m

Journal of the American Dietetic Association, July 2010.