Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Cereal Hound


Justin is a cereal hound. It's hard to keep it in the pantry he eats so much of it. He's rather have it over anything else I could possibly slave over in the kitchen. And when I met him in college, and the really through the first half of our married life, he craved that really awful for you sweet cereal too. Frosted Mini Wheats were about as healthy as he got. You know, all the ones that leave you hungry an hour later even after 4 bowls full? He could easily eat cereal for breakfast, snack, appetizer to dinner, dessert and routinely eats it before he goes to bed.

Now that we have miniature cereal eaters, I've found that these little creatures after those bowls of sugar in the morning are starving before I even get them in the dishwasher. A lot of people crave good healthy fresh food in the summers.

About 2 years ago I started trying different cereal and comparing labels. I've ingrained in the kids heads which cereals are good for you and which ones are bad for you so that they embarrassingly point out loud those consumers in the store whom have chosen poorly with regard to their health. I let them pick out their own cereal actually (but only in the 1/10th of the cereal aisle that actually houses the decent stuff.)

I'm looking for low sugar, high fiber, no high fructose corn syrup, and whole grains while staying away from corn based cereals. I think we do pretty well aside from splurging on occasion. Every kid deserves a big bowl of Lucky Charms at some point in their childhood (if you expect them to bring your grandchildren to see you later in life).

This list isn't comprehensive to my requirements or tastes but they are hitting at least one or two, especially the fiber. But take a look. You'd be surprised at how often you can sub out better for you cereals to fill the craving with a similar taste.





2 comments:

  1. those Kashi cereals are wonderful. I don't really get them very often, though. Landon eats cereal like crazy - probably two large bowls a day (midnight snack?). I usually just buy the big bags of cereal. For the first 5 years of our marriage he wanted the sugary stuff too, and i guess still does but nothing that I would eat. Breakfast is difficult to do well. Yogurt is full of carbs and sugars too, but also with lots of goodies. It's hard to do breakfast well, I think. Except I really like Bonnye Woodlief's bfast smoothies!

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  2. our kids like the Kashi honey sunshine one and really like it without milk, just as a snack.

    i think my brothers must be making up for the lack of sugar cereal in their childhood!

    brent goes thru phases for b'fast - 2 years of nothing but instant oatmeal, 2-3 years of yogurt, and now we're on year 3 of post's cranberry almond crunch...this summer we've both done lots of yogurt and granola...and then we like eggs and bacon and pancakes on weekends!

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