171 is the magic number
Doug and I have been idly bickering recently over the type of breakfast cereal we give to our kids. This has arisen from his discovery that Special K with Red Berries (a current favourite) has sugar as its third ingredient and Doug has been saying, quite sensibly, that they'd be better off having Rice Krispies or Cornflakes or some other "plain" cereal.
I assumed that the sugar content was in the additional berries rather than the flakes and was less bothered about, but after a quick surf for the nutritional info of normal Special K, it seems the sugar is in the flakes too. So much for it being an essential part of a calorie controlled diet....
Anyway, today I looked at the calorie content of all the cereals in our cupboard as a comparison and found that cornflakes, Special K, Cheerios and Rice Krispies all have the same amount of calories for 30g of cereal in semi-skimmed milk - 171. I had a quick shufty at some other cereals online and although they didn't have the "per serving with milk" comparison, they did have the info for 100g of product. To my surprise, Cocoa Pops, Frosties and Crunchy Nut are roughly similar to plain cornflakes and Rice Krispies.
Of course, there is the issue of where the calories come from (ie from refined carbs like sugar), but it did get me wondering if there was something special about the 171 figure; is there some government guideline that means that if its over this figure then it qualifies as junk food? Or is it simply that a certain amount of cereal and milk plus some sugar will weigh in at about this figure?
Anyone know?
posted by Rowan @ 2:35 PM
8 Comments:
You know what? They make it all up...
oh shut up :-)
I noticed the same thing several years ago. I hope you find the answer and share it.
I don't know about the 171 thing, but the sugar content of supposedly healthy cereals is one of my big bugbears. I can spend literally hours in the supermarket reading the ingredient lists on them and getting more and more annoyed.
I still buy Crunchy Nut Cornflakes from time to time though...
Apparently according to Which there is a good reason none of the cereal manafacturers have gone for the traffic light system:
"In May, the consumer watchdog Which? published a survey which shed further light on why the industry was so worried about traffic light labelling. It analysed 275 big name breakfast cereals from leading manufacturers on sale in UK supermarkets. Despite industry claims to have reformulated their recipes to make their products healthier, Which? found 75% of them still had high levels of sugar, and almost a fifth had high levels of salt, according to FSA criteria. That 75% would all receive red labels.
"Nearly 90% of those targeted at children were high in sugar, 13% high in salt, and 10% high in saturated fat. Several cereals making claims to be good for you received red lights too. All Bran was high in salt when surveyed, although Kellogg's says it has reduced levels since then. Special K gets a red light for sugar and salt."
The 171 thing sounds suspicious. I bet it's a set percentage of the GDA or something though.
Just to be clear that was May 2006.
Aha! It's 9% of an adults GDA for calories.
Why 9%? I don't know - this doesn't necessarily help!
so they reckon that breakfast only should account for 9% of your calorie intake for the day. interesting.
Post a Comment
<< Home