If you’re around my age, you may remember when almost every commercial for cereal ended with the tagline: Part of this nutritious breakfast! Or, Part of this balanced breakfast! The “balanced” breakfast shown was always a bowl of cereal, two pieces of toast (because the cereal alone didn’t provide enough processed grain), a glass of milk and a glass of juice – usually orange juice.
Here are a couple of collections of old cereal ads I found on YouTube. The first is from the 1970s, the second from the 1980s:
Boy, cereal had some great flavors back in the day: chocolate, sugar, honey, cinnamon toast, more sugar, marshmallows, rocky road ice cream, even more sugar, and chocolate chip cookies. Trust me, Kellogg’s and General Mills had no problem convincing us to eat those “balanced” breakfasts. I think we may be looking at part of the reason rates of obesity began to take off around 1980.
Just for grins, I took clips from the videos above and stitched them into a little summary of my own:
Let’s look at the nutrition breakdown of that “balanced” breakfast the cereal manufacturers were promoting back then. Officially, a serving of cereal is cup or a half-cup, depending on the brand, but if you look at the commercials, those cereal bowls hold more like two cups – and I didn’t know any kids who ate just one cup of cereal for breakfast. They were called cereal bowls for a reason.
So I’ll go with two cups of Frosted Flakes, 2% milk (which is what we drank when I was an adolescent), Parkay Margarine (which was mostly trans fat back then) and Minute Maid orange juice from concentrate, the kind your mom mixed with water. Here’s what we get:
Frosted Flakes (2 cups)
Calories: 320
Protein: 2.7 g
Carbs: 75 g
Sugar: 32 g
Fat: 2 g
2% Milk (2 cups)
Calories: 244
Protein: 16 g
Carbs: 23 g
Sugar 23 g
Fat: 10 g
Toast (2 slices)
Calories: 140
Protein: 4 g
Carbs: 28 g
Sugar: 4 g
Fat: 2 g
Parkay Margarine (2 tbs)
Calories: 120
Fat: 14 g
Minute Maid Orange Juice (8 oz)
Calories: 110
Carbs: 27 g
Sugar: 24 g
Okay, let’s add up that nutritious breakfast:
Calories: 934
Protein: 22.7 g
Carbs: 153 g
Sugar: 83 g
Fat: 28 g
As a percent of calories, it works out to about 65% carbohydrate, 10% protein and 25% fat. Hey, I’ll be darned if those aren’t the proportions recommended by the USDA! No wonder people in my generation are so remarkably lean and free of diabetes.
I believe (or hope, anyway) that most parents these days know that cereals full of chocolate and marshmallows aren’t health food. But I’d bet many of them still believe a glass of orange juice is part of a nutritious breakfast.
Take a look at the sugar content in that glass of orange juice listed above. It’s a Coke with a bit of vitamin C. Now take a look at part of the abstract from a study in which investigators included orange juice with breakfast for one of the study groups, but not the other.
On 2 separate days, healthy normal-weight adolescents (n = 7) and adults (n = 10) consumed the same breakfast with either orange juice or drinking water and sat at rest for 3 h after breakfast. The meal paired with orange juice was 882 kJ (210 kcal) higher than the meal paired with drinking water. Both meals contained the same amount of fat (12 g). For both age groups, both meals resulted in a net positive energy balance 150 min after breakfast. Resting fat oxidation 150 min after breakfast was significantly lower after breakfast with orange juice, however. The results suggest that, independent of a state of energy excess, when individuals have a caloric beverage instead of drinking water with a meal, they are less likely to oxidize the amount of fat consumed in the meal before their next meal.
If you’re not oxidizing fat, you’re storing it. That’s why we never include orange juice (or apple juice, or grape juice, or any other fruit juice) in the nutritious breakfasts we serve at home – much less cereal and toast.
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Can you folks share what you do eat for breakast in lieu of cereals. Bacon and eggs, obviously. But what else constitutes a balanced breakfast in your house. Any grains at all? What kind of dairy? What’s your thoughts on non-milk milks (i.e. almond, coconut, oat) – I know soy is a no-no. If you aren’t lucky to have access to raw milk, what about kefir? Breakfast is a big deal for me, as I usually prepare it for my family and it really is the most important meal of the day for a school kid. I’d like to make sure they’re getting the ‘right stuff’.
Feel free to point me to a sample menu link somewhere if you have one. Thanks.
Speaking for myself, bacon, eggs, sausage, avocadoes, plus foods like these when Chareva makes them:
http://www.fathead-movie.com/index.php/2012/10/15/too-good-bread-and-almost-paleo-bread/
http://www.fathead-movie.com/index.php/2012/10/21/bagels/
Re: milk-free milk, coconut milk (full-fat, unsweetened) is fine. Almond milk tends to have carrageenan, a thickener that’s also used to induce inflammation and sensitivity to pain in laboratory animals. It makes some people very ill. If your kids are over 12, you might give dairy a pass–it can cause acne. On the rare occasion I want more than a snack for breakfast, it’s bacon or eggs with mushrooms and black coffee.
David if an opinion from a third party helps…
A lot of times I just breakfast on leftover dinner. Easy and filling and no extra work to toss an extra burger or chop in the pan I am already cooking in. While I am fond of “breakfast foods” I see no reason to limit them to breakfast times, nor am I determined to keep “dinner foods” in their own corner of the day. And really, who wouldn’t do well in school after starting the day with stir fried sirloin?
On the subject of non-milk, I use coconut milk or almond milk at times if I can find one without a bunch of additives, but that is only because I cannot drink real milk. For the family I decided that the stress and expense of chasing after every blessed miracle food available was more damaging than just getting the occasional gallon of plain ol’ grocery store milk. Or cream, when I come across a good quality one. My teenager will drink a carton of the real thing all by herself, and she is a lean, healthy, energetic … erm, strain on my maternal patience, to be candid, I should add strong willed and opinionated to that list. Hazards of raising a child to think for herself, I suppose.
Having raised a trio of boys that “think for themselves” – a gentle reminder: behaviors that annoy Mom & Dad now will likely serve the child well as an adult. 🙂
Well, I remember my mom chewing me out at age 12 because she caught me reading The Iliad under the covers with a flashlight when I supposed to be asleep.
I make omelettes with a couple of eggs, spinach, sausage, cheese, and red/green bell peppers every morning.
–David–
Just remember this: Dinner– it’s what’s for breakfast!
Breakfast was the most difficult meal for my husband to modify when we started eating primal/low carb. He was a cereal every day kinda guy. We now eat lots of eggs, but often it’s last night’s leftovers. Or I will make paleo pancakes on the weekend, or paleo blueberry muffins and berries & cream.
I stopped eating cereal many years ago– I was always hungry a couple hours later. (now I know why!). Of course, the bagel and cream cheese that I ate instead wasn’t much better…
For myself, I like coconut oil and half n half in my coffee, and sometimes some eggs and/or meat. My husband eats full fat plain yogurt w/ granola (either store bought w/ gluten free oats, or my homemade version w/ just ground up nuts, honey, vanilla, and coconut oil)
I usually have scrambled eggs during the week (as I said elsewhere, I cook a big batch on the weekend and use it during the week as needed) with shredded cheese added. Usually on the weekends, I’ll have toast made with my version of the Almost Paleo Bread recipe with either butter and peanut butter or cream cheese on it.
Lately, I’ve been making bacon and eggs for my husband and myself on the weekends beacause we’re in the process of moving and I figure we could use the extra fuel. And I’ve been including cheesy garlic buscuits (Kroger brand, where you just add water–surprisingly tasty) because my husband is a carb addict and has been missing them (I used to make them a lot back when I wasn’t concerned about carbs and additives). The buscuits obviously aren’t healthy, but I figure it’s okay to splurge once in awhile.
(wow, I’m posting a lot of comments on this entry)
Breakfast is simple for me: A big ole bowl of nada!
Unless you count the cream in my coffee.
I had some variation on bacon and eggs every day for the first several years of low carbing. Then I started messing around with intermittant fasting, only eating between 5 and 10 pm for over a year.
I dumped that plan but never went back to eating breakfast. I’m not really hungry in the morning so I figure, why eat?
I usually do bulletproof coffee. In addition to bacon & eggs if I am eating I’ll make a hamburger patty, a small steak, or some sausages. My wife sometimes eats atkins or quest bar smothered in kerrygold butter or cream cheese.
I actually didn’t eat that much cereal for breakfast as a kid, largely because I very rarely ate *breakfast* except on the weekends when my mom would make pancakes or similar. Not that I ate healthy food (except what mom cooked for dinner, which was usually pretty good)–a lot of the time I ate nothing, interspersed with stuffing myself with whatever junk I could get at the convenience store. Assuming I wasn’t actively being punished for some indiscretion by being denied food on purpose by my parents.
Yeah, I was sick all the time. And starving–my strongest memory of my youth is of being sick and hungry and not being allowed to eat anything unless I escaped the apartment and bought it myself.
Sorry to hear that.
It probably looms larger in my memory than in reality, but it doesn’t take much of that sort of thing to leave a strong impression, I guess.
This was an interesting study. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nS1Wv0ax3s0
My mother also had the rule about sugar’s place in the ingredient list. I think the only permitted cereals were Cherrios and Shredded Wheat–usually because those alternated being on sale. When we really didn’t have money, she’d make these horrific whole wheat pancakes, which were invariably burned on at least one side and usually still batter-y inside. No maple syrup–she’d “make her own” by cooking brown sugar a certain way. Few sugary snacks at lunch, and then usually homemade. Not much dessert, no soda. Sometimes some lemonaide in the summer, but very little juice, either. She also believed instinctively that there was something wrong with margarine–why would you eat a chemically derived spread when people had been eating butter for thousands of years without issue?
We were very, very poor, so I know she couldn’t possibly afford to feed seven people eggs and bacon. I don’t begrudge that. And she burnt everything because she was trying to monitor four and later five children and get them all ready for school. And she never let us develop a strong sweet tooth, which I’ll always be grateful for. Cheerios and whole wheat garbage still made me fat and sick, but when I changed my diet in my late 30s my body started recovering and healing very quickly; no issues. I credit her with that. If she’d let me eat like my friends–Frankenberry and Pop Tarts and Little Debbie snack cakes–I don’t think the transition would have been so easy. I have friends who ate that way and are now trying to heal who are having a longer, tougher road to get there–all of them ate that kind of garbage growing up.
I had my early childhood in the 80s and my formative years in the 90s. Mom was at least smart enough to forbid the explicitly-sugared-or-candy-themed-cereals (unless it was a special occasion like going on a camping trip. My go-to then was Lucky Charms, because marshmallows) so I grew up on Kix and Crispix for most breakfasts. Oh, and of course, mom was terrified of fats, so we had nothing but non-fat milk to put on it.
Not surprisingly, I spent most of my childhood fat, hungry, and with zero energy, to the point where I was sneaking food from the pantry on a regular basis.
This was an interesting study. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nS1Wv0ax3s0
Those ads are unbelievable!!
At least the cartoon characters are honest in the depiction of the obnoxious behavior that accompanies sugar and grain consumption. The self-affirming Frosted Mini-wheat Man is Bipolar and proud of it! His wife is a slut full of real strawberries, who flirts with anyone who comes to their door with a pulse. No wonder Mini-Wheat needs lacto-morphine and gliadin to keep him company!
My emaciated childhood friend was allowed to eat Apple Jacks so long as he took his prescription speed and sedatives. “Beans” & “Fruit” & Wheat & Sugar & Psychotic meds that left him talking to the Mrs. Butterworth bottle…unless, like Jennifer he was being denied food for stealing food, puking or asking for attention.
Every morning can be like Long Days Journey into Night, if you obey your doctors and Mrs. Butterworth.
Thank you and hugs to your family, for sharing your healing and hilarious message to millions of malnourished children who will learn to help themselves and misinformed adults. You’re a fat slice of The Solution.
I remember those conversations with Mrs. Butterworth. She never told me there was no actual butter in her bottle.
My reply for David’s question ; “.. folks share what you do eat for breakast in lieu of cereals. Bacon and eggs, obviously. But what else constitutes a balanced breakfast in your house. Any grains at all? What kind of dairy? What’s your thoughts on non-milk milks”
The word “obviously” is thrown in there to distract from you intention to NOT just have bacon and eggs most of the time? Danger.
Just do bacon and eggs. Hey the nature of milk is neither here nor there if it’s not being added to crap in a bowl because it’s not bacon & eggs therefore not breakfast, but remember : non-milk milks are NOT milk, so don’t mention them, don’t buy them, just ignore them.
“In lieu of cereals” only applies if you start from a point where cereals are the norm : again, ignore that stuff.
🙂 and … eat when you’re hungry, not when the clock says wake up. You might not be doing “breakfast” after a while…
At least the cartoon characters are honest in the depiction of the obnoxious behavior that accompanies sugar and grain consumption. The self-affirming Frosted Mini-wheat Man is Bipolar and proud of it! His wife is a slut full of real strawberries, who flirts with anyone who comes to their door with a pulse. No wonder Mini-Wheat needs lacto-morphine and gliadin to keep him company!
My emaciated childhood friend was allowed to eat Apple Jacks so long as he took his prescription speed and sedatives. “Beans” & “Fruit” & Wheat & Sugar & Psychotic meds that left him talking to the Mrs. Butterworth bottle…unless, like Jennifer he was being denied food for stealing food, puking or asking for attention.
Every morning can be like Long Days Journey into Night, if you obey your doctors and Mrs. Butterworth.
Thank you and hugs to your family, for sharing your healing and hilarious message to millions of malnourished children who will learn to help themselves and misinformed adults. You’re a fat slice of The Solution.
I remember those conversations with Mrs. Butterworth. She never told me there was no actual butter in her bottle.
Each week our family would go grocery shopping and when we got to the cereal aisle my parents would tell my brother and me to go pick few boxes of cereal. My parents frequently complained about the price of cereal, considering its primarily sugar content, but the nutritional harm was never an issue. My parents were involved, caring parents in every other regard, it’s just that other than “spoiling our dinner,” the nutritional merit of our diet just wasn’t often on the radar.
And cereal wasn’t just for breakfast. Dry cereal, straight from the box, was a frequent after school snack while watching Gilligan’s Island or Get Smart.
To the commenter wondering what a typical breakfast now would be when LCHF, one of our favorite fast and easy breakfast is our version of migas: pastured eggs scrambled in coconut oil with sliced avocado, some cheese, and whatever veggies we have laying around.
Same with my parents. It just never occurred to them that Captain Crunch might be bad for us.
And Captain Crunch is bad for the roof of your mouth. 🙂
that is awfully lot of sugar & calories for near nil nutritional value.
good that i didn’t grow up having cereal. never liked it. it was not satisfying; i just got hungry in 2 hours (i figured this out even before i switch my diet to PHD/WP/paleo-ish)
a colleague eats a full cup of dry cheerio as breakfast @ work. i don’t know how anyone can eat that much cardboard. no wonder he has bad teeth but i keep my mouth shut.
Back in my youth (so many years ago), we solved the issue with tasteless cereals like Cheereos and Shredded Wheat: we dumped sugar on them.
I put sugar on Frosted Flakes and other sweetened cereals. But we at least had whole milk.
Each week our family would go grocery shopping and when we got to the cereal aisle my parents would tell my brother and me to go pick few boxes of cereal. My parents frequently complained about the price of cereal, considering its primarily sugar content, but the nutritional harm was never an issue. My parents were involved, caring parents in every other regard, it’s just that other than “spoiling our dinner,” the nutritional merit of our diet just wasn’t often on the radar.
And cereal wasn’t just for breakfast. Dry cereal, straight from the box, was a frequent after school snack while watching Gilligan’s Island or Get Smart.
To the commenter wondering what a typical breakfast now would be when LCHF, one of our favorite fast and easy breakfast is our version of migas: pastured eggs scrambled in coconut oil with sliced avocado, some cheese, and whatever veggies we have laying around.
Same with my parents. It just never occurred to them that Captain Crunch might be bad for us.
And Captain Crunch is bad for the roof of your mouth. 🙂
I was my Dad’s caretaker in his last two years of life; it was unfortunately too late to save him from his undiagnosed and of course untreated (up to then) diabetes. I had to learn at first of course to inject insulin and monitor his blood sugar, and was told (as all are) that if BG got too low and if he was in danger of passing out, to feed him a bit of maple syrup to bring it back to normal.
Well, I found out that a tablespoon of plain orange juice was quicker. I know because I watched the sugar rise almost immediately and the meter was there to prove it.
Sadly, though I was able to reduce drastically the amount of insulin needed, he was so ill by then that he eventually passed away at 84. I knew about low carb and fed him that way, but didn’t know as much as I know now. They also fed him statins though he thankfully refused them after about a month but much damage, I think now, was already done.
I’m sorry to hear about your father.
that is awfully lot of sugar & calories for near nil nutritional value.
good that i didn’t grow up having cereal. never liked it. it was not satisfying; i just got hungry in 2 hours (i figured this out even before i switch my diet to PHD/WP/paleo-ish)
a colleague eats a full cup of dry cheerio as breakfast @ work. i don’t know how anyone can eat that much cardboard. no wonder he has bad teeth but i keep my mouth shut.
Back in my youth (so many years ago), we solved the issue with tasteless cereals like Cheereos and Shredded Wheat: we dumped sugar on them.
I put sugar on Frosted Flakes and other sweetened cereals. But we at least had whole milk.
We only had the lower-sugar cereals in the house, but of course I added sugar on top of those. Every morning I had cereal and toast, but I put a TON of (real) butter on the toast, so maybe that helped to balance things out a bit.
Our lunches and dinners were actually fairly low-carb, now that I look back on it. We rarely ate bread apart from at breakfast, and never ate pasta because my father had bad memories of having to eat it while serving in WWII. He called it “paste” in the most contemptuous tone!
And my mother wouldn’t buy the newer convenience foods that were coming on the market because she said they were a waste of money.
I eat low-carb now, but what I’ve actually done is go back to the way I was brought up to eat (minus the cereal and toast breakfasts).
Funny to have come full circle.
I suspect there were a lot of families like yours, at least until the anti-fat, anti-cholesterol hysteria kicked in. It was a common belief that too much sugar and starch would make you fat. I still remember when the “waist trimmer” meal at a restaurant was a burger patty, slice of tomato and cottage cheese.
Almost forgot about the sugar bowl. You could make your own frosted flakes out of corn flakes. Well, sort of.
I was my Dad’s caretaker in his last two years of life; it was unfortunately too late to save him from his undiagnosed and of course untreated (up to then) diabetes. I had to learn at first of course to inject insulin and monitor his blood sugar, and was told (as all are) that if BG got too low and if he was in danger of passing out, to feed him a bit of maple syrup to bring it back to normal.
Well, I found out that a tablespoon of plain orange juice was quicker. I know because I watched the sugar rise almost immediately and the meter was there to prove it.
Sadly, though I was able to reduce drastically the amount of insulin needed, he was so ill by then that he eventually passed away at 84. I knew about low carb and fed him that way, but didn’t know as much as I know now. They also fed him statins though he thankfully refused them after about a month but much damage, I think now, was already done.
I’m sorry to hear about your father.
We only had the lower-sugar cereals in the house, but of course I added sugar on top of those. Every morning I had cereal and toast, but I put a TON of (real) butter on the toast, so maybe that helped to balance things out a bit.
Our lunches and dinners were actually fairly low-carb, now that I look back on it. We rarely ate bread apart from at breakfast, and never ate pasta because my father had bad memories of having to eat it while serving in WWII. He called it “paste” in the most contemptuous tone!
And my mother wouldn’t buy the newer convenience foods that were coming on the market because she said they were a waste of money.
I eat low-carb now, but what I’ve actually done is go back to the way I was brought up to eat (minus the cereal and toast breakfasts).
Funny to have come full circle.
I suspect there were a lot of families like yours, at least until the anti-fat, anti-cholesterol hysteria kicked in. It was a common belief that too much sugar and starch would make you fat. I still remember when the “waist trimmer” meal at a restaurant was a burger patty, slice of tomato and cottage cheese.
Almost forgot about the sugar bowl. You could make your own frosted flakes out of corn flakes. Well, sort of.
How can we not mention granola cereals in a thread about breakfast horrors? I guess some people still have the delusion that granola is healthy. I ate tons of it when I was a kid. (My favorite was Heartland, not sure if it is still made as I avoid the cereal aisle in the grocery store. It, like all granola cereals, was loaded with sugar. And yes I was a fat kid.)
I have to laugh at the tiny portions of granola that are considered one “serving” in order to mislead people about the calorie content. Once I saw some “Bear Naked” granola in the check out line. 150 calories per serving which I thought wasn’t bad. Then I saw that a “serving” was a quarter cup! Not even enough to cover the bottom of a cereal bowl. Who the hell eats a quarter cup of granola cereal? A full bowl is probably 5 or 6 servings. If you eat 2 full bowls (lots of people do) you might as well buy an insulin pump with your granola.
I fell for that pitch as a lad. I liked Quaker 100% Natural.
I remember the songs more than the commercials . . . funny to see Brian Austin Green (of 90210 fame) and Mark Paul Gosselaar (of Saved By the Bell fame) as little kids in these old videos! Thanks for the walk down memory lane, and for all you do via your movie and blog.
I didn’t recognize either of them, but I didn’t watch those shows.
How can we not mention granola cereals in a thread about breakfast horrors? I guess some people still have the delusion that granola is healthy. I ate tons of it when I was a kid. (My favorite was Heartland, not sure if it is still made as I avoid the cereal aisle in the grocery store. It, like all granola cereals, was loaded with sugar. And yes I was a fat kid.)
I have to laugh at the tiny portions of granola that are considered one “serving” in order to mislead people about the calorie content. Once I saw some “Bear Naked” granola in the check out line. 150 calories per serving which I thought wasn’t bad. Then I saw that a “serving” was a quarter cup! Not even enough to cover the bottom of a cereal bowl. Who the hell eats a quarter cup of granola cereal? A full bowl is probably 5 or 6 servings. If you eat 2 full bowls (lots of people do) you might as well buy an insulin pump with your granola.
I fell for that pitch as a lad. I liked Quaker 100% Natural.
Tom, did you remove your DVD from Netflix? I can’t find it.
It was a two-year license. We’re hoping they’ll take the Director’s Cut next.
I remember the songs more than the commercials . . . funny to see Brian Austin Green (of 90210 fame) and Mark Paul Gosselaar (of Saved By the Bell fame) as little kids in these old videos! Thanks for the walk down memory lane, and for all you do via your movie and blog.
I didn’t recognize either of them, but I didn’t watch those shows.
Tom, did you remove your DVD from Netflix? I can’t find it.
It was a two-year license. We’re hoping they’ll take the Director’s Cut next.
Here in France the (exact same brands of) cereals’ package indicate that a regular serving is just 30 grams. Being a curious kid, I once tried weighing my usual breakfast – it was around 120 grams of cereals. And I sometimes needed seconds.
Here in France the (exact same brands of) cereals’ package indicate that a regular serving is just 30 grams. Being a curious kid, I once tried weighing my usual breakfast – it was around 120 grams of cereals. And I sometimes needed seconds.
I confess that I missed the relative ease of breakfast cereal until recently. My young nephew stayed with us for a couple of days, and wanted his usual Cheerios for breakfast — we had to take him to school, and I was afraid he wouldn’t eat our usual LCHF offerings, but didn’t want him to be hungry — so we got a box. My three kids, of course, wanted some too, and I thought, what the heck, it’s two days, no big deal. Easy breakfast. (Ha!)
So, yes, the breakfast itself was easy. Pour cereal, pour milk, supply spoon. I didn’t add any sugar or honey or sweetener of any kind, just whole milk. But then we dropped off my nephew at school, and it began. My kids were hungry EVERY 30 MINUTES, pretty much all day long, both days! Regardless of the fact that we went back to our usual LCHF snacks and meals. They just could not get satisfied after starting out with that cereal.
Ugh. Consider me chastened, and re-convinced of the importance of a TRULY healthy breakfast! 🙂
Eating wheat just makes you want more of the stuff.
I read somewhere I can’t find that “The green revolution was the biggest mistake since the domestication of wheat.”
I confess that I missed the relative ease of breakfast cereal until recently. My young nephew stayed with us for a couple of days, and wanted his usual Cheerios for breakfast — we had to take him to school, and I was afraid he wouldn’t eat our usual LCHF offerings, but didn’t want him to be hungry — so we got a box. My three kids, of course, wanted some too, and I thought, what the heck, it’s two days, no big deal. Easy breakfast. (Ha!)
So, yes, the breakfast itself was easy. Pour cereal, pour milk, supply spoon. I didn’t add any sugar or honey or sweetener of any kind, just whole milk. But then we dropped off my nephew at school, and it began. My kids were hungry EVERY 30 MINUTES, pretty much all day long, both days! Regardless of the fact that we went back to our usual LCHF snacks and meals. They just could not get satisfied after starting out with that cereal.
Ugh. Consider me chastened, and re-convinced of the importance of a TRULY healthy breakfast! 🙂
Eating wheat just makes you want more of the stuff.
I read somewhere I can’t find that “The green revolution was the biggest mistake since the domestication of wheat.”
Listen to this guy. Dr Neil Barnard. Firstly he looks really thin. I mean virtually anorexic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFdY7nKWbjU
He’s saying that fat -any kind of fat – somehow causes diabetes by acting as the “chewing gum in the lock” that prevents the key, glucose, from getting into the cell. Fat blocks insulin from carrying the sugar into the cell? Maybe you can make more sense of it than me. It sounds like quackery.
I mean he has to be basing it on something right? As a doctor it has to be based on some research, even if it was poorly done or misunderstood. I know he’s a vegan and does have the agenda of promoting that lifestyle, but it is difficult to believe that he’d knowingly lie, because it’s sounds like he’s at least convinced himself. As as he’s written books on the subject, he surely does cite something – anything – to back himself up.
…right?
It’s quackery. He’s a psychiatrist and a vegan zealot who’s rather selective about his facts. In one of his talks, he urged people to eat low-glycemic foods to avoid diabetes, but of course only highlighted low-glycemic vegetarian foods and never mentioned that meat has a glycemic index of close to zero.
Listen to this guy. Dr Neil Barnard. Firstly he looks really thin. I mean virtually anorexic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFdY7nKWbjU
He’s saying that fat -any kind of fat – somehow causes diabetes by acting as the “chewing gum in the lock” that prevents the key, glucose, from getting into the cell. Fat blocks insulin from carrying the sugar into the cell? Maybe you can make more sense of it than me. It sounds like quackery.
I mean he has to be basing it on something right? As a doctor it has to be based on some research, even if it was poorly done or misunderstood. I know he’s a vegan and does have the agenda of promoting that lifestyle, but it is difficult to believe that he’d knowingly lie, because it’s sounds like he’s at least convinced himself. As as he’s written books on the subject, he surely does cite something – anything – to back himself up.
…right?
It’s quackery. He’s a psychiatrist and a vegan zealot who’s rather selective about his facts. In one of his talks, he urged people to eat low-glycemic foods to avoid diabetes, but of course only highlighted low-glycemic vegetarian foods and never mentioned that meat has a glycemic index of close to zero.
He does himself no favours comparing cheese to Vaseline.
http://www.nutraingredients.com/Research/Dairy-calcium-may-reduce-fat-absorption-from-meals
I bet he’d say his meals doesn’t need dairy to reduce fat’s bio-availability because his meals have no fat to begin with!
Zealot is right, because when one hears people like Caldwell Esselstyn shout “NO OIL! NO OIL! NO OIL!” He comes across as not a scientist, but some kind of religious demagogue, chanting to the faithful on the march towards Zion.
And on a related tangent, check this out:
http://www.flora.com/Flora/Flora-product-range/Flora-Light.aspx
In a nice heart logo too. But the question is, how does one reduce butter’s saturate content by 87% and have it retain the solid consistency of butter. They don’t actually say this on the packet or in the ingredients, but the answer has to be hydrogenated vegetable oil. Trans fat.
Yet they’ve got a section where they talk about lowering cholesterol. http://www.flora.com/Healthcareprofessionals/Lowering-cholesterol/SampleOrangeBackground.aspx
From which I quote:
“Minimise intake of trans fats (in cakes, pastries, meat and butter)”
The hypocrisy would be laughable were it not contributing to death.
I’m lucky that my parents were staunchly against sugar while I was growing up. Exceptions were made for holidays when we were allowed dessert or candy, but they regarded eating sugary cereal for breakfast as deranged. Still, they did end up believing that saturated fat was a no-no when the idea was increasingly promulgated in the eighties and nineties. They also believed that 100% natural fruit juice was not problematic. I disagree now, but I did continue drinking juice well into my twenties because I thought only sugar-added beverages were the issue.
My parents bought “better” cereals like Grape Nuts, Shredded Wheat, and Uncle Sam’s. Now that I’m an adult, I tend to think these were only marginally better. They might not have had sugar, but they were still highly processed foods. All that said, I’ve never thought anyone would sit down to a giant bowl of cereal and decide to accompany it with several slices of toast, as well as juice, as well as an additional glass of milk. That’s nauseating, and even as a little kid in the eighties I would snicker at the contention this formed a “balanced breakfast.”
Due to the nutritional brainwashing I was subject to in adolescence, I spent decades wary of eggs, butter, milk, meat, avocados, coconut. I was told all those foods were dangerous, and I did not (back then) have access to the internet or other resources that would have allowed me to investigate the conventional wisdom. I’m 37 now and only just in the last few years have I begun to seriously question the garbage I was told to eat: vegetable oils, skim milk, low-fat cheese, egg white scrambles, highly-processed soy “meats.” Thank goodness I never had a taste for most junk food like candy, soda, and chips or I would be in worse shape. The “healthy” food has been had enough. I now have a super-slow metabolism from restricting. I have gluten sensitivity. I have gone from perfect teeth to having small cavities filled every year. My bloodwork shows vitamin deficiencies. Of course, my doctor says limit meat, avoid any full fat dairy, avoid eggs. She says this even though I have low cholesterol and B12 and D deficiency. This madness needs to end.
A second comment to add what I do eat for breakfast now.
It varies, but I generally try to scramble two pastured eggs with a bit of cheese or cottage cheese. I use grass-fed butter to cook them. I eat these with sauteed spinach or zucchini or some berries or maybe a small cluster of grapes. (Grapes and berries I try to buy organic.) I will also have two shots of espresso in a cup of milk. I heat and froth the milk in cold weather; otherwise, I pour the milk and espresso together over ice. I can’t buy raw milk in my state, but I do buy low-temp pasteurized milk from local grass-fed cows. And that is whole milk. I will never go back to skim.
I actually am not overly fond of the taste of eggs, but I have a history of disordered eating and am clearly orthorexic so I realize I just need to get over it. I still have anxiety about eating all the foods I was told were “bad.”
I’m lucky that my parents were staunchly against sugar while I was growing up. Exceptions were made for holidays when we were allowed dessert or candy, but they regarded eating sugary cereal for breakfast as deranged. Still, they did end up believing that saturated fat was a no-no when the idea was increasingly promulgated in the eighties and nineties. They also believed that 100% natural fruit juice was not problematic. I disagree now, but I did continue drinking juice well into my twenties because I thought only sugar-added beverages were the issue.
My parents bought “better” cereals like Grape Nuts, Shredded Wheat, and Uncle Sam’s. Now that I’m an adult, I tend to think these were only marginally better. They might not have had sugar, but they were still highly processed foods. All that said, I’ve never thought anyone would sit down to a giant bowl of cereal and decide to accompany it with several slices of toast, as well as juice, as well as an additional glass of milk. That’s nauseating, and even as a little kid in the eighties I would snicker at the contention this formed a “balanced breakfast.”
Due to the nutritional brainwashing I was subject to in adolescence, I spent decades wary of eggs, butter, milk, meat, avocados, coconut. I was told all those foods were dangerous, and I did not (back then) have access to the internet or other resources that would have allowed me to investigate the conventional wisdom. I’m 37 now and only just in the last few years have I begun to seriously question the garbage I was told to eat: vegetable oils, skim milk, low-fat cheese, egg white scrambles, highly-processed soy “meats.” Thank goodness I never had a taste for most junk food like candy, soda, and chips or I would be in worse shape. The “healthy” food has been had enough. I now have a super-slow metabolism from restricting. I have gluten sensitivity. I have gone from perfect teeth to having small cavities filled every year. My bloodwork shows vitamin deficiencies. Of course, my doctor says limit meat, avoid any full fat dairy, avoid eggs. She says this even though I have low cholesterol and B12 and D deficiency. This madness needs to end.
A second comment to add what I do eat for breakfast now.
It varies, but I generally try to scramble two pastured eggs with a bit of cheese or cottage cheese. I use grass-fed butter to cook them. I eat these with sauteed spinach or zucchini or some berries or maybe a small cluster of grapes. (Grapes and berries I try to buy organic.) I will also have two shots of espresso in a cup of milk. I heat and froth the milk in cold weather; otherwise, I pour the milk and espresso together over ice. I can’t buy raw milk in my state, but I do buy low-temp pasteurized milk from local grass-fed cows. And that is whole milk. I will never go back to skim.
I actually am not overly fond of the taste of eggs, but I have a history of disordered eating and am clearly orthorexic so I realize I just need to get over it. I still have anxiety about eating all the foods I was told were “bad.”
Yes these companies were and are the Wells Fargo of nutrition.
Yes these companies were and are the Wells Fargo of nutrition.