17 ms·

Drop that spoon: The truth about breakfast cereals (2010)

90 points by 3stripe 12y ago

sosuke 12y ago
About cereal boxes containing more nutrition than the cereal inside http://mythbustersresults.com/episode55 http://mythbustersresults.com/episode55
- infra178 12y ago
  "MythBusters" is an unscientific television show run by stunt men. Imagine someone holding a candle underneath a gas tank for five seconds, not exploding, and concluding with cheesy sound effects that the flammability of gasoline is a "Myth". That's "MythBusters".
  - Karunamon 12y ago
    XKCD responds to this better than I can: http://xkcd.com/397/ http://xkcd.com/397/ That aside, I've yet to see a conclusion on that show that wasn't reasonable.
    - dllthomas 12y ago
      "That aside, I've yet to see a conclusion on that show that wasn't reasonable." Whenever the myth is about a secret project to such-and-such, they regularly use "we couldn't figure out how to do it" to conclude "it can't be done"; that isn't reasonable. I'm generally a fan of the show, mind you.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    It's kind of disturbing that the mythbusters link posted is better quality nutrition science than a lot of the nutrition that gets upvotes on HN.
whistlerbrk 12y ago
Bottom line.. we're killing ourselves with overloading our bodies with carbohydrates. Nearly every bit of nutritional advice handed out by the government since the 70s is a pack of lies made in concert with the subsidized corn and wheat industries. These industries sell you poison, then the pills that slow down how fast the poison kills you and tell you it's okay to keep eating it. Then the prescribing doctor gets kick backs. Diabetics take note. How does continuing to eat the thing that got you there to begin with make any sense? Complete and utter lifestyle change. Eat as many eggs as you want. Ignore EVERYTHING a doctor tells you about cholesterol. Eat a ton of vegetables and as much grass fed meat and butter as you can afford. (note: 'poison' is a bit of hyperbole)
- wldcordeiro 12y ago
  Your entire post is hyperbole.
  - whistlerbrk 12y ago
    Yes it was. Do what works for your body. I wrote that a bit out of frustration dealing with doctors recently. But frankly minus the hyperbole, nutritional advice from doctors ain't great.
- phloxicon 12y ago
  Grass fed or not, regular red meat consumption isn't good for us. There is a good body of evidence that that people from Europe do well on the Mediterranean diet. That diet is mostly plant based but with oily fish and occasional eggs and dairy.
  - erichmond 12y ago
    Where's your evidence that grass-fed beef isn't good for us? If you're saying eating red meat 7 times a week is bad, that's obvious, but I've seen no studies that say that grass-fed beef 1-2 days a week would be bad for you.
    - 12y ago
billmalarky 12y ago
Unfortunately this is the truth about just about the entire western food industry. I have a feeling the only thing that will stop the obesity epidemic is heavy food regulation which people will fight tooth and nail against. Without some sort of government intervention, it's just too difficult to make healthy choices for most people to be successful. I feel like the food industry is in an arms race as to who can make the most addictive product possible. The new Doritos Loaded product is a great example, it reminds me of a designer drug. I'm sure it is absolutely delicious, crafted specifically to incite pleasure in our brains, but processed to be faster to digest and give little nutrition so as to not fill us up so we stop eating. Edit: As another point, prepare a meal of healthy food and see how much harder it is to overeat. Without the intensely pleasurable flavors that drive you to eat "until you hate yourself" as Lous CK would say, I find I enjoy the flavor until I am reasonably full and then don't want to pack anymore food down because it just doesn't taste good enough too.
- lukifer 12y ago
  After breaking the cycle of fake food, the body's satiety signals are surprisingly effective at calorie/portion control. It does makes more sense to model something like Doritos Loaded as an addictive drug rather than a foodstuff: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus > the only thing that will stop the obesity epidemic is heavy food regulation which people will fight tooth and nail against. I don't think it's primarily consumers that would fight against this; rather, the food industry will. At the moment, not only do we not "sin tax" sugar the way we do tobacco, we actually subsidize artificially cheap corn starch and syrup. And unfortunately, eliminating these subsidies is a complete political non-starter.
  - baddox 12y ago
    Do you think that any "treat" that is unhealthy should be considered an addictive drug rather than a foodstuff? Everyone I know, regardless of how health-conscious they are, will at least occasionally partake in some candy, or fried food, or chips, etc. even if it's very rare. Personally, I don't think that's a big deal.
grannyg00se 12y ago
Do we really need yet another essay on the perils of processed foods? Just look at the ingredients on most breakfast cereals and you'll see sugar or some kind of sugar substitute as the second or third ingredient. Eat real food if you're at all interested in your health.
- jp555 12y ago
  Sugar is a real food. Rice is >70% sugar and so are most potatoes. Why fear 50g of cereal when you eat it with 200+g of milk, which is about the most perfect food available? Sugar is the preferred energy of almost every cell in our bodies; and in the end, protein & fat will be converted into glucose if no sugar (glycogen) is available.
  - NicoJuicy 12y ago
    I don't think rice contains much sugar.. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=rice+sugar http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=rice+sugar And sugar is "easy energy" and will make you fat. There are better sugar types (such as fructose (sugar from fruit) and Dextrose (found in the pharmacy))
    - jp555 12y ago
      Here we see 163 grams of dry white rice contains 123 grams of sugar -> http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+cup+raw+rice http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+cup+raw+rice All non-fibre carbohydrates are metabolized as sugar, and it's VERY rare for our bodies to convert carbs into fat. All complex sugars are broken down into monosaccharides before absorption. Chew on a piece of bread for a couple minutes and enzymes in your saliva will break it down into glucose, and it will become sweet in your mouth. Dextrose is glucose, and sugar does not directly make you fat. Eating a sustained caloric surplus makes you fat, no matter the macronutrient composition of your diet. Here's more detail about the biochemistry of how we get fat - http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/how-we-get-fat.html http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/how-we-get-fat.htm...
      - 12y ago
casca 12y ago
For more detail, the woman who wrote The Guardian piece has a book that goes into more detail - Not on the Label: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Not-On-Label-Really-Plate/dp/0141015667/ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Not-On-Label-Really-Plate/dp/0141015...
VLM 12y ago
You feed mammals grains and processed grains if you want to fatten them up as fast as possible for the slaughter while they're in the feedlot, if you don't care how long they live, cause a couple years is long enough. Or according to TV commercials you feed grains to little mammals of your species because you love them and they're cute. Even though it'll fatten them up and kill em. You can try and deny what biological commonalities exist for whatever reasons, but the weight scale knows better. Feeding people the same stuff that farmers use to fatten their herds will inevitably make people look like people of walmart website. No avoiding it.
smegel 12y ago
That's why I eat oats. Not porridge, just plain rolled oats with cold milk and bluberries.
- nly 12y ago
  Eh? In the UK porridge is just oats + (hot) milk. How is that significantly different?
  - thomasahle 12y ago
    Porridge is actually described in the article as the good old british cereal. (Search the article for 'oat'). Though, porridge oats are usually smaller and more processed than oats for eating cold.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
  - smegel 12y ago
    In Australia (which surely can't be that different to the UK), porridge is oats cooked in boiling water for 10 minutes until it becomes a thick slurry. Then a small amount of cold milk is poured around the rim of the bowl and some sugar is sprinkled on top.
- thomasahle 12y ago
  This! And deep inside everyone already knows this, they just try to convince themselves that other options 'can be healthy too'. Look at this, per 100g, the "Kashi 7 Whole Grain Cereals, Puffs" mentioned in this thread has 5-10g of protein and less than 5g of fibre [1]. The top cereal when googling healthy cereals [2] has 2g of protein and 5g of fibre. In comparison plain nice, big oats have 13g of protein and 10g of fibre. There's just no beating it. [1]: https://www.kashi.com/our-foods/cold-cereal/kashi-7whole-grain-puffs-cereal https://www.kashi.com/our-foods/cold-cereal/kashi-7whole-gra... [2]: http://greatist.com/health/best-healthy-cereal-brands http://greatist.com/health/best-healthy-cereal-brands
Stratoscope 12y ago
Try this: Go to your favorite grocery store and look for Kashi 7 Whole Grain Puffs, what we used to call Puffed Kashi. This is the original product from the Kashi company: Whole hard red wheat, whole brown rice, whole oats, whole barley, whole triticale, whole rye, whole buckwheat, sesame seeds, and nothing else. Puffed, but just barely puffed so it's still chewy and crunchy. Great stuff. So try to find it. Your grocer will probably have over a dozen varieties of Kashi cereals, every one of them sugared up concoctions. But they are very unlikely to have the original Puffed Kashi, the real thing. Trader Joe's used to have it. Whole Foods used to have it. Safeway used to have it. Now they all just have Kashi's sugared products. But lucky me, I found one place that still has the real Puffed Kashi: Amazon!
nlh 12y ago
The single biggest improvement I made to my diet (and life, in general) was giving up breakfast cereal. I used to eat a heaping bowl of the bad stuff every. single. morning. growing up (bad stuff = Lucky Charms, Frosted Flakes, Fruity Pebbles, etc.). I'd have it for dessert ("look mom, I'm not having ice cream, I'm having cereal! it's healthy!"). Then as I got older, I thought I was making an improvement by "upgrading" to something more wholesome -- like Frosted Mini Wheats ("It's shredded wheat.......and SUGAR.") I finally rebooted my eating when I started running about 4 years ago and promptly lost 35+ lbs and actually became athletic for the first time in my life. I traded in the cereal and started having greek yogurt for breakfast (more recently I switched to having a _real_ breakfast in the morning -- eggs, grapefruit and steel-cut oats and feel even better). But the point is: We've been marketed-at to the point where we just think that cereal is what you have for breakfast, and it feels great to wake up from that trance.
- megablast 12y ago
  Wow, people really think that breakfast cereal is healthy, especially the sugary stuff you were eating? This might just be a US thing, because outside US I don't think it is considered healthy at all. And it has been that way for a long time. Breakfast cereal is easy, and it has milk which is good for you, I thought that is why it is popular.
  - a3n 12y ago
    We in the US will eat anything that's advertised to us.
  - rcthompson 12y ago
    No, they market it as "part of a balanced breakfast", even the sugar blasted sugar bombs: http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2010/04/13/#.U_FKp7xnA_0 http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2010/04/13/#.U_FKp7x...
  - _delirium 12y ago
    I think it's common in Europe for people to consider muesli healthy, even though many of the common brands are not really that healthy either. Depends on how much dried fruit and other such stuff you have in it (some varieties also have sugar or honey added). But it's true that I don't think anybody considers things closer to the Froot Loops end of the spectrum to be healthy.
mingabunga 12y ago
Speaking of cat food, 1/3 of pet foods contain brewers rice which has little or no nutritional value http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewers_rice http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewers_rice For cats being completely carnivorous, I can't imagine carbs are doing them any favors.
nn3 12y ago
I used to live near a Kellog's factory. It was a really scary looking gigantic building, looking like a big machine from hell with steam pouring out of it. It was a really scary thought to imagine how they make cornflakes there. I never was much into prepackaged cereals, but that totally put me off.
MisterBastahrd 12y ago
Milk is sugar water and fat. Breakfast cereals are mostly sugars and starches with a bit of fiber. Add them together and you have a recipe for crashing halfway between breakfast and lunch.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
mark_l_watson 12y ago
My wife and I gave up eating breakfast cereal years ago because we did not feel as good in the morning compared to eating fruit, eggs, perhaps a veggie omelette, etc. Everyone is different so if I may suggest: try doing some A/B testing: go a month eating cereal and then go a month not eating cereal and see how differntly you feel. For all I know, some people may thrive on cereal, but not my wife and I.
guscost 12y ago
Do they still have a shot in cereal commercials where the announcer says "part of this complete breakfast" while the screen flashes a place setting with a small bowl of cereal, eggs, toast, half a grapefruit, orange juice, and milk? I remember thinking that breakfast would be just as "complete" if you left out the cereal.

90 points by 3stripe 12y ago

About cereal boxes containing more nutrition than the cereal inside http://mythbustersresults.com/episode55 http://mythbustersresults.com/episode55

infra178 12y ago
"MythBusters" is an unscientific television show run by stunt men. Imagine someone holding a candle underneath a gas tank for five seconds, not exploding, and concluding with cheesy sound effects that the flammability of gasoline is a "Myth". That's "MythBusters".
- Karunamon 12y ago
  XKCD responds to this better than I can: http://xkcd.com/397/ http://xkcd.com/397/ That aside, I've yet to see a conclusion on that show that wasn't reasonable.
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    "That aside, I've yet to see a conclusion on that show that wasn't reasonable." Whenever the myth is about a secret project to such-and-such, they regularly use "we couldn't figure out how to do it" to conclude "it can't be done"; that isn't reasonable. I'm generally a fan of the show, mind you.
- DanBC 12y ago
  It's kind of disturbing that the mythbusters link posted is better quality nutrition science than a lot of the nutrition that gets upvotes on HN.

whistlerbrk 12y ago

Bottom line.. we're killing ourselves with overloading our bodies with carbohydrates. Nearly every bit of nutritional advice handed out by the government since the 70s is a pack of lies made in concert with the subsidized corn and wheat industries. These industries sell you poison, then the pills that slow down how fast the poison kills you and tell you it's okay to keep eating it. Then the prescribing doctor gets kick backs. Diabetics take note. How does continuing to eat the thing that got you there to begin with make any sense? Complete and utter lifestyle change. Eat as many eggs as you want. Ignore EVERYTHING a doctor tells you about cholesterol. Eat a ton of vegetables and as much grass fed meat and butter as you can afford. (note: 'poison' is a bit of hyperbole)

wldcordeiro 12y ago
Your entire post is hyperbole.
- whistlerbrk 12y ago
  Yes it was. Do what works for your body. I wrote that a bit out of frustration dealing with doctors recently. But frankly minus the hyperbole, nutritional advice from doctors ain't great.
phloxicon 12y ago
Grass fed or not, regular red meat consumption isn't good for us. There is a good body of evidence that that people from Europe do well on the Mediterranean diet. That diet is mostly plant based but with oily fish and occasional eggs and dairy.
- erichmond 12y ago
  Where's your evidence that grass-fed beef isn't good for us? If you're saying eating red meat 7 times a week is bad, that's obvious, but I've seen no studies that say that grass-fed beef 1-2 days a week would be bad for you.
  - 12y ago

billmalarky 12y ago

Unfortunately this is the truth about just about the entire western food industry. I have a feeling the only thing that will stop the obesity epidemic is heavy food regulation which people will fight tooth and nail against. Without some sort of government intervention, it's just too difficult to make healthy choices for most people to be successful. I feel like the food industry is in an arms race as to who can make the most addictive product possible. The new Doritos Loaded product is a great example, it reminds me of a designer drug. I'm sure it is absolutely delicious, crafted specifically to incite pleasure in our brains, but processed to be faster to digest and give little nutrition so as to not fill us up so we stop eating. Edit: As another point, prepare a meal of healthy food and see how much harder it is to overeat. Without the intensely pleasurable flavors that drive you to eat "until you hate yourself" as Lous CK would say, I find I enjoy the flavor until I am reasonably full and then don't want to pack anymore food down because it just doesn't taste good enough too.

lukifer 12y ago
After breaking the cycle of fake food, the body's satiety signals are surprisingly effective at calorie/portion control. It does makes more sense to model something like Doritos Loaded as an addictive drug rather than a foodstuff: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus > the only thing that will stop the obesity epidemic is heavy food regulation which people will fight tooth and nail against. I don't think it's primarily consumers that would fight against this; rather, the food industry will. At the moment, not only do we not "sin tax" sugar the way we do tobacco, we actually subsidize artificially cheap corn starch and syrup. And unfortunately, eliminating these subsidies is a complete political non-starter.
- baddox 12y ago
  Do you think that any "treat" that is unhealthy should be considered an addictive drug rather than a foodstuff? Everyone I know, regardless of how health-conscious they are, will at least occasionally partake in some candy, or fried food, or chips, etc. even if it's very rare. Personally, I don't think that's a big deal.

grannyg00se 12y ago

Do we really need yet another essay on the perils of processed foods? Just look at the ingredients on most breakfast cereals and you'll see sugar or some kind of sugar substitute as the second or third ingredient. Eat real food if you're at all interested in your health.

jp555 12y ago
Sugar is a real food. Rice is >70% sugar and so are most potatoes. Why fear 50g of cereal when you eat it with 200+g of milk, which is about the most perfect food available? Sugar is the preferred energy of almost every cell in our bodies; and in the end, protein & fat will be converted into glucose if no sugar (glycogen) is available.
- NicoJuicy 12y ago
  I don't think rice contains much sugar.. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=rice+sugar http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=rice+sugar And sugar is "easy energy" and will make you fat. There are better sugar types (such as fructose (sugar from fruit) and Dextrose (found in the pharmacy))
  - jp555 12y ago
    Here we see 163 grams of dry white rice contains 123 grams of sugar -> http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+cup+raw+rice http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+cup+raw+rice All non-fibre carbohydrates are metabolized as sugar, and it's VERY rare for our bodies to convert carbs into fat. All complex sugars are broken down into monosaccharides before absorption. Chew on a piece of bread for a couple minutes and enzymes in your saliva will break it down into glucose, and it will become sweet in your mouth. Dextrose is glucose, and sugar does not directly make you fat. Eating a sustained caloric surplus makes you fat, no matter the macronutrient composition of your diet. Here's more detail about the biochemistry of how we get fat - http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/how-we-get-fat.html http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/how-we-get-fat.htm...
    - 12y ago

casca 12y ago

For more detail, the woman who wrote The Guardian piece has a book that goes into more detail - Not on the Label: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Not-On-Label-Really-Plate/dp/0141015667/ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Not-On-Label-Really-Plate/dp/0141015...

VLM 12y ago

You feed mammals grains and processed grains if you want to fatten them up as fast as possible for the slaughter while they're in the feedlot, if you don't care how long they live, cause a couple years is long enough. Or according to TV commercials you feed grains to little mammals of your species because you love them and they're cute. Even though it'll fatten them up and kill em. You can try and deny what biological commonalities exist for whatever reasons, but the weight scale knows better. Feeding people the same stuff that farmers use to fatten their herds will inevitably make people look like people of walmart website. No avoiding it.

smegel 12y ago

That's why I eat oats. Not porridge, just plain rolled oats with cold milk and bluberries.

nly 12y ago
Eh? In the UK porridge is just oats + (hot) milk. How is that significantly different?
- thomasahle 12y ago
  Porridge is actually described in the article as the good old british cereal. (Search the article for 'oat'). Though, porridge oats are usually smaller and more processed than oats for eating cold.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- smegel 12y ago
  In Australia (which surely can't be that different to the UK), porridge is oats cooked in boiling water for 10 minutes until it becomes a thick slurry. Then a small amount of cold milk is poured around the rim of the bowl and some sugar is sprinkled on top.
thomasahle 12y ago
This! And deep inside everyone already knows this, they just try to convince themselves that other options 'can be healthy too'. Look at this, per 100g, the "Kashi 7 Whole Grain Cereals, Puffs" mentioned in this thread has 5-10g of protein and less than 5g of fibre [1]. The top cereal when googling healthy cereals [2] has 2g of protein and 5g of fibre. In comparison plain nice, big oats have 13g of protein and 10g of fibre. There's just no beating it. [1]: https://www.kashi.com/our-foods/cold-cereal/kashi-7whole-grain-puffs-cereal https://www.kashi.com/our-foods/cold-cereal/kashi-7whole-gra... [2]: http://greatist.com/health/best-healthy-cereal-brands http://greatist.com/health/best-healthy-cereal-brands

Stratoscope 12y ago

Try this: Go to your favorite grocery store and look for Kashi 7 Whole Grain Puffs, what we used to call Puffed Kashi. This is the original product from the Kashi company: Whole hard red wheat, whole brown rice, whole oats, whole barley, whole triticale, whole rye, whole buckwheat, sesame seeds, and nothing else. Puffed, but just barely puffed so it's still chewy and crunchy. Great stuff. So try to find it. Your grocer will probably have over a dozen varieties of Kashi cereals, every one of them sugared up concoctions. But they are very unlikely to have the original Puffed Kashi, the real thing. Trader Joe's used to have it. Whole Foods used to have it. Safeway used to have it. Now they all just have Kashi's sugared products. But lucky me, I found one place that still has the real Puffed Kashi: Amazon!

nlh 12y ago

The single biggest improvement I made to my diet (and life, in general) was giving up breakfast cereal. I used to eat a heaping bowl of the bad stuff every. single. morning. growing up (bad stuff = Lucky Charms, Frosted Flakes, Fruity Pebbles, etc.). I'd have it for dessert ("look mom, I'm not having ice cream, I'm having cereal! it's healthy!"). Then as I got older, I thought I was making an improvement by "upgrading" to something more wholesome -- like Frosted Mini Wheats ("It's shredded wheat.......and SUGAR.") I finally rebooted my eating when I started running about 4 years ago and promptly lost 35+ lbs and actually became athletic for the first time in my life. I traded in the cereal and started having greek yogurt for breakfast (more recently I switched to having a _real_ breakfast in the morning -- eggs, grapefruit and steel-cut oats and feel even better). But the point is: We've been marketed-at to the point where we just think that cereal is what you have for breakfast, and it feels great to wake up from that trance.

megablast 12y ago
Wow, people really think that breakfast cereal is healthy, especially the sugary stuff you were eating? This might just be a US thing, because outside US I don't think it is considered healthy at all. And it has been that way for a long time. Breakfast cereal is easy, and it has milk which is good for you, I thought that is why it is popular.
- a3n 12y ago
  We in the US will eat anything that's advertised to us.
- rcthompson 12y ago
  No, they market it as "part of a balanced breakfast", even the sugar blasted sugar bombs: http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2010/04/13/#.U_FKp7xnA_0 http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2010/04/13/#.U_FKp7x...
- _delirium 12y ago
  I think it's common in Europe for people to consider muesli healthy, even though many of the common brands are not really that healthy either. Depends on how much dried fruit and other such stuff you have in it (some varieties also have sugar or honey added). But it's true that I don't think anybody considers things closer to the Froot Loops end of the spectrum to be healthy.

mingabunga 12y ago

Speaking of cat food, 1/3 of pet foods contain brewers rice which has little or no nutritional value http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewers_rice http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewers_rice For cats being completely carnivorous, I can't imagine carbs are doing them any favors.

nn3 12y ago

I used to live near a Kellog's factory. It was a really scary looking gigantic building, looking like a big machine from hell with steam pouring out of it. It was a really scary thought to imagine how they make cornflakes there. I never was much into prepackaged cereals, but that totally put me off.

MisterBastahrd 12y ago

Milk is sugar water and fat. Breakfast cereals are mostly sugars and starches with a bit of fiber. Add them together and you have a recipe for crashing halfway between breakfast and lunch.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

mark_l_watson 12y ago

My wife and I gave up eating breakfast cereal years ago because we did not feel as good in the morning compared to eating fruit, eggs, perhaps a veggie omelette, etc. Everyone is different so if I may suggest: try doing some A/B testing: go a month eating cereal and then go a month not eating cereal and see how differntly you feel. For all I know, some people may thrive on cereal, but not my wife and I.

guscost 12y ago

Do they still have a shot in cereal commercials where the announcer says "part of this complete breakfast" while the screen flashes a place setting with a small bowl of cereal, eggs, toast, half a grapefruit, orange juice, and milk? I remember thinking that breakfast would be just as "complete" if you left out the cereal.