Crotchety Monday Musing
Okay, technically not a fiber fail—there’s plenty of fiber here. Rather, I should call it a fiber vehicle fail.
Used to be, cereal makers pitched sugary cereals to kids. Maybe they still do—I haven’t watched the morning cartoons in years. But I do still get a daily newspaper delivered. This weekend it arrived on my porch with a sample box of cereal and a cereal bar. Or what General Mills calls a ‘chewy bar’.
General Mills ‘Fiber One’ products seem to be marketed to adults who are interested in being healthy. The packaging includes phrases like ‘51% daily value of fiber’ and ‘Excellent source of antioxidant vitamins A and E’.
But look at the ingredient list. The cereal has 22 items listed (if you don’t count the sub-items it takes to make ‘crisp oats’, ‘toasted oats’--who knew it takes 6 ingredients to make toasted oats?--and ‘wheat bits’). It also contains many sweeteners: sugar, brown sugar, high fructose corn syrup, honey, and molasses. The chewy bar has 23 items, including many sugars, and various processed oils.
I don’t know why anyone would buy this cereal; there are plenty of better choices with fiber available. As for the chewy bars, I suppose people like the grab and go aspect of the chewy bar.
You want grab and go? Put some almonds in your pocket. Wrap a couple of prunes up in a piece of waxed paper. It doesn’t get much easier/cheaper/healthier, not to mention more satisfying, than that.
(5 prunes + 1 handful almonds = about 7 grams fiber)
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6 comments:
And people eat this stuff! Grandma would be horrified.
OK, now why did I think I was going to be reading about wool when I saw this post title?
Yeah, I have to admit I didn't notice the wool connection at all at first. I should probably spend less time being crotchety and more time knitting(preferably with a bowl of nuts at hand).
We received the same abomination with our paper on Saturday! Of course we won't eat it, so then what do we do? Throw it away?? Compost the contents and recycle what packaging you can? What a colossal waste of resources!
You're right, of course, Karen--I hadn't even begun to think about how many of these were tossed. It would be interesting to know how many were delivered with the paper, and how many of them were thrown away.
I could not agree more. If you want to talk high fiber cereals, I consider myself somewhat of an expert. I KNOW my fiber cereals!
On my list of top 5 is Trader Joe's High Fiber O's; I've turned several people on to these - they are oddly addictive. Around 10 grams of fiber/serving (that's some good fiber!) AND...I think there are only about 7 ingredients, total. Awesome.
No, I am not a shill for T.J.'s, in case you were wondering...
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