I love plain oats.

I eat healthy foods, but I don't eat things I don't like. There is almost always an alternative that I do like.

A friend of mine eats 1 c. of blueberries with her breakfast. One day, I looked at them and they were all nasty looking -- shriveled, almost crispy. I said, "What the ****? These berries are old and gross." She said, "It doesn't matter. I don't even really taste them. I just swallow them." Her trainer told her to eat them. She's not economically challenged and doesn't mind wasting food. She just doesn't care about her food.

That's fine for her, but I'm not willing to do that. My produce if fresh. My blueberries are from the local farm. Fresh blueberries, strawberries, and peaches all summer. Pure bliss. I'm a foodie. I *love* food. I eat fresh food that I like that nourishes me. I make healthy choices. But, I do derive pleasure from my foods.

Gah. This is what happens when greed and power collide. We have a massive food industry trying to find ways to make us eat more without being satisfied. We have a health industry that's completely geared to finding us pills that will mitigate the symptoms of eating this garbage over the course of a short, sick lifetime, and a government that so enjoys the tax revenue coming off it, plus the fun of having their @$$es kissed by the lobbyists from both, that they'll stand back and laugh while it happens. They can't afford to have the majority of us healthy - the economy would collapse even worse than it has already.

I've never eaten Froot Loops and I don't pay any attention to green check marks on food boxes. I have been reading food labels since I was about 20. However, I am appalled, but not surprised, by this new marketing ploy as well.

What's equally as bad (or even worse) is that after looking up the ingredients online I found out that Froot Loops contain partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, aka trans fats. This smart choice label should not allow a food to be given their designation if it contains ANY trans fats. If you eat a few servings you have consumed a pretty substantial amount of trans fats.

I'm not even going to discuss the food coloring or the "natural" flavors.

For the curious, here are the ingredients in Fruit Loops per Kellogg's website:

SUGAR; WHOLE GRAIN CORN FLOUR; WHEAT FLOUR; WHOLE GRAIN OAT FLOUR; OAT FIBER; SOLUBLE CORN FIBER; PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE OIL (ONE OR MORE OF: COCONUT, SOYBEAN AND/OR COTTONSEED OILS)†; SALT; SODIUM ASCORBATE AND ASCORBIC ACID (VITAMIN C); NIACINAMIDE; REDUCED IRON; NATURAL ORANGE, LEMON, CHERRY, RASPBERRY, BLUEBERRY, LIME AND OTHER NATURAL FLAVORS; RED #40; BLUE #2; TURMERIC COLOR; YELLOW #6; ZINC OXIDE; ANNATTO COLOR; BLUE #1; PYRIDOXINE HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B6); RIBOFLAVIN (VITAMIN B2); THIAMIN HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B1); VITAMIN A PALMITATE; BHT (PRESERVATIVE); FOLIC ACID; VITAMIN D; VITAMIN B12.
† LESS THAN 0.5g TRANS FAT PER SERVING.

Some people might be comforted to know that they have a reduced sugar version, which I found on the Kellogg site just now. The only difference I can see is that instead of sugar being the first ingredient, it is the second. And it only accounts for 31% of the total calories.

I don't know how the people who make this kind of stuff can sleep at night, knowing little kids are eating it and becoming obese and/or unhealthy from it. Corporations need to take more responsibility for the nutrition of their products, just as individual people need to take more responsibility for educating themselves about nutrition and making smarter food choices for themselves and their families.

I don't think there are any Grapes OR Nuts in Grape Nuts, are there? How on earth did it get its name???

Kira

Wow. I just read an article on the new smart choice labeling system, and froot loops is just one of many foods that represent the skewed idea of what is a smart choice. Another example, Hellman's Mayo is a "smart choice" while eggs are not because they have too much cholesterol. Hmmm. I'm interested to see if this new smart choice labeling lasts.

Thought I'd challenge my preconceptions re: Froot Loops vs what my DH terms a healthy alternative -- Grape Nuts. This is what I found:

Nutritional Values for Froot Loops:
Serving size 1 cup
Calories 118
Calories from Fat 5
% Daily Value*
Total Fat 0.6g1%
Saturated Fat 0.4g2%
Trans Fat 0.0g
Polyunsaturated Fat 0.1g
Monounsaturated Fat 0.1g
Cholesterol 0mg0%
Sodium 141mg6%
Total Carbohydrates 26.7g9%
Dietary Fiber 0.6g2%
Sugars 12.5g
Protein 1.4g

Vitamin A 20% • Vitamin C 32%
Calcium 0% • Iron 30%


Nutritional Value Grape Nuts:
Amount Per Serving (1/2 cup)
Calories 208
Calories from Fat 10
% Daily Value*
Total Fat 1.1g2%
Saturated Fat 0.2g1%
Cholesterol 0mg0%
Sodium 354mg15%
Total Carbohydrates 47.2g16%
Dietary Fiber 5.0g20%
Sugars 7.0g
Protein 6.3g

Vitamin A 15% • Vitamin C 0%
Calcium 2% • Iron 90%

Fromn Caloriecount.about.com.

Note: counts are for 1 cup Froot Loops vs 1/2 cup Grape Nuts. If you compare the amounts by halving the Froot Loop values, the sugar counts are virtually the same per volume. Check out the relative sodium counts, tho, and the total calorie differences and the Vitamin A and C differences...I'd take the Froot Loops, personally...I'd bet if the nutritional values were compared without knowing which product was what, alot of us would choose the lower calorie, higher volume, lower sodium, higher vitamin, lower carbohydrate option...I can get fiber in other forms.

Thoughts?

Kira

hummm...you're trying to cause trouble?.....

Not at all! I personally was surprised to see how these two items stacked up, because my DH ALWAYS swears by Grape Nuts. But given the nutritional counts, I'm not so sure that my trusty Froot Loops aren't holding their own!



Kira

For me, Grape Nuts are like eating little clods of dirt :|

That's 'cause at your age MEESH you don't need to worry about fiber

Like I already said, I just can't see the point in comparing the added vitamin content.

I have to laugh at calling Froot Loops a higher volume food I don't mean that in a bad way. If it feels to you like you get more volume, that's great. But it's only higher volume because it's full of air. Grape-Nuts are dense. And to me, that's *very* apparent after eating 1 cup of it. I feel like I haven't had anything. Classic "air food" for me. If I'm eating at all mindfully and not wolfing down my food, denser foods (like nuts) do fill me up with less volume than air foods.

The food coloring in Froot Loops is just sick [which hasn't made me totally immune to Froot Loops , but I still think it's gross]. I don't know about sugar and food coloring in the Grape-Nuts though: A Yahoo Answers post said it has brown sugar and corn syrup and "caramel color" whatever that means. Obviously not a great information source. But the Post Grape-Nuts website is terrible and uninformative. It doesn't look from their image of their box like it lists brown sugar, corn syrup and caramel color, but it's hard to see. It also lists 4g sugar. But again, the site is terrible - not sure which version of the cereal (flakes or not) they show, or how different they are.

I do like both types of Grape-Nuts (or at least I used to), but haven't had either since I can't remember when, because I just don't do cereal for breakfast anymore.

I used to throw 1T. or so of Grape Nuts in my yogurt for the crunch. Now that I'm calorie counting and such, I figure the crunch isn't so critical.