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Articles Food Facts BREAKFAST CEREALS and Slimming
Articles Food Facts BREAKFAST CEREALS and Slimming
| Food Facts |
BREAKFAST CEREALS and SlimmingIf you thought picking a 'healthy' breakfast cereal was just a matter of looking at the packet, then think again. All the grains that breakfast cereals are made from contain fibre, some more than others. The unpalatable fact about high-fibre ingredients, like bran, is that they aren't very appetising and the addition of salt and sugar helps to improve the taste. In the muesli cereals a high proportion of sugar is found naturally, in raisins for example. Even those labelled 'no added sugar' contain 4g to 12.5g of total sugar per serving. Kellogg's Country Store for example contains about a third of it's weight in sugar! The cereals with the highest sugar content are aimed at children. Quaker Sugar Puffs contains over half it's weight in sugar. Frosties, Coco Pops and Jordan's Crunchy Toasted Oat Cereal are all particularly high in sugar content. Some breakfast cereals contain large amounts of sodium, surprisingly when you know that cereals don't naturally contain more than a trace of salt. Sodium chloride, commonly known as salt, is about 35% sodium. It's the sodium in salt which has been associated with high blood pressure, which can lead to strokes or heart disease. The average daily intake in the United Kingdom is about 3,500mg equivalent to two teaspoons of salt - so some cereals would provide about 10% of that daily intake, a significant amount for people who have been advised to cut down. |
