‘Better’ bad breakfast choices are better than no meal at all

By Lisa Ryckman, Scripps Howard News Service | Wednesday, February 01, 2006

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Breakfast raises questions: Would a bowl of marshmallows with chocolate sauce be just as nutritious as a bowl of Count Chocula? Can gravel mixed with blueberries replace Fruity Pebbles?

As a mom, I need to know these kinds of things, because I deal every morning with extremes: my son, who will eat anything that isn’t asparagus, and my daughter, who won’t eat anything that isn’t chocolate.

There’s a whole boxful of research — much of it funded by cereal makers — that concludes kids who eat breakfast — specifically, cereal — weigh less, behave better and score higher on tests. They spend less time in the nurse’s office, attend school more regularly and have lower cholesterol.

But is any breakfast better than no breakfast at all?

“Quality always matters. It’s not just a question of filling up stomachs,” says Roberta Anding, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association who works with adolescents at Texas Children’s Hospital.

“As someone who deals with obesity and insulin resistance, I got to tell you, I don’t want people eating really sugared breakfast cereals in the morning,” she says. “But there is a case for saying something’s better than nothing. I think we just need to say, there are better bad choices. Having a sweetened breakfast cereal is a better bad choice.”

Look at the ingredient list on your kid’s favorite box of cereal, and you’ll find lots of heavily fortified sugar. As General Mills likes to point out, Count Chocula has spooky fun shapes and nine vitamins and minerals, plus it’s an “Excellent Source Of Iron and Kids Love It, Tastes Great!”

Cereal makers seem to think kids prefer stuff that doesn’t taste like anything that could possibly be good for them.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group, took Kellogg Co. to task for ads that celebrate the fact that Apple Jacks tastes like yummy cinnamon and not like nasty ol’ apples.

“It’s bad enough that Kellogg’s is selling a cereal that has more sugar and, in fact, more salt than apples or apple juice concentrate,” says Margo Wootan, CSPI’s director of nutrition policy. “But to then go and trash the taste of real apples adds insult to injury.”

As part of its truth-in-food mission, CSPI also has gotten Aunt Jemima to acknowledge its blueberry waffles contain no actual blueberries — trust me, you don’t want to know what’s in an “artificial blueberry bit” — and Tropicana to relabel its Peach Papaya and Strawberry Melon drinks to reflect the fact that they contain no peaches, papayas, strawberries or melons.

Breakfast is all the rage right now. General Mills has joined the breakfast club with its yearlong “Choose Breakfast” campaign, which mixes a couple of messages: 10 seconds of breakfast boosterism and 20 seconds of ads for Trix and Lucky Charms.

Earlier this year, Kraft took the high road by saying it was canning kid-focused ads for Fruity Pebbles, Oreo O’s and other sugary cereals.

Much of the research that touts breakfast cereal is funded by companies that make cereal, which makes it suspect, but not necessarily wrong.

Two Tufts University studies found that kids did better on memory tests when they ate cereal versus no breakfast, and did even better when they ate instant oatmeal instead of cold cereal. And yes, Quaker Oats paid for both studies.

Research at Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital also found that breakfast-eaters had better math scores and attendance and were more likely to be well-behaved and on time. A Baylor College of Medicine study found that teens who ate breakfast had better nutrition overall and ate less junk food during the day.

There certainly might be other reasons — such as your superior genes — that explain why your kids are smarter, sweeter, better-fed and better-read than their Fruit Loop-deprived peers.

“But there are enough unbiased studies to reliably conclude that breakfast flat-out matters,” Anding said.

Nickelodeon, which has my complete faith when it comes to kid surveys, asked 6- to 14-year-olds about their eating habits. Then they asked their parents.

Somehow, 50 percent of kids say they regularly eat breakfast, but 68 percent of their parents say they do. That means at least 18 percent of parents have succumbed either to wishful thinking, hallucinations, mirrors or all the above. And 44 percent of kids say they choose what they eat for breakfast all the time, but only 31 percent of parents say the kids do.

Disconnect aside, government stats show that the number of kids eating breakfast has steadily declined during the past 25 years, so parents need to figure out ways to get their kids to eat in the morning without resorting to what Anding calls “vigilante nutrition.”

Compromise can be the key, she says. A young patient of hers was hooked on Fruity Pebbles, but he also suffered from severe constipation. It’s a long road from Fruity Pebbles to All-Bran, but mixing the two gave him his sugar fix and intestinal fix, too. “If you look at the way human beings are, we know what we need to do, but it’s hard to get there,” the dietitian says.

Anding suggests mixing low-sugar Cheerios with Honey Bunches of Oats and toss in a banana.

Grab ‘n’ go makes breakfast doable, and here are some of Anding’s favorites:

- Make a “dump breakfast” by taking 10 seconds to dump fresh or dried fruit and granola into yogurt. By using different kinds of fruit or cereal and different flavors of yogurt, you can have a new version of the same nutritious breakfast every morning.

- Pack your child an extra peanut butter sandwich, spread peanut butter on a whole-wheat bagel or mix cereal, raisins and nuts and toss them into Ziploc bags.

“I put a week’s worth of those together on Sunday, and I don’t have to worry about them again till Friday,” Anding says. “They don’t spoil and they don’t go squish — unless you sit on them.”

- Be flexible about breakfast. It doesn’t have to be eggs and toast. How about leftovers — cold pizza, mac ‘n’ cheese, a whole-wheat tortilla wrapped around a string cheese? Just because you won’t eat it doesn’t mean your kid won’t.

- Children are as likely to perform open-heart surgery first thing in the morning as they are to slice up a melon. So make it easy: Do the work for them, and put the fruit into glass bowls at eye level. To see it is to eat it.

Some people simply can’t eat much in the morning — my daughter is like that, and so am I.

It might be that the long, foodless night has our bodies breaking down fat and producing ketones, which can make you feel queasy. So eat a light snack before bed to shorten the fast.

If you still can’t stomach solid food first thing in the a.m., try something liquid, like a smoothie made with fruit and yogurt.

“You’ve got to come up with Plan B,” Anding said. “Nagging someone to eat breakfast when they can’t tolerate it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Let’s come up with something else that you can make permanent. Good nutrition is about what you can do over the long run.”

Quick and healthy breakfast options

Got a minute? Some healthy one-minute breakfasts:

- Fruit and nut oatmeal. Add dried cranberries and almonds to instant oatmeal, and microwave for 60 seconds.

- Shake It Up, Baby! Whirl low-fat milk, frozen strawberries and a banana in a blender for 30 seconds. Drink it with a whole-wheat bagel.

- Banana dogs. Spread peanut butter in a whole-grain hot dog bun; plop in a banana, and sprinkle with raisins.

- Breakfast taco. Sprinkle grated Monterey Jack cheese over a corn tortilla; fold in half, and microwave for 20 seconds. Top with salsa.

Source: www.quakeroatmeal.com