Yep. Frosted Flakes has less sugar than many cereals promoted as “healthy”
Except that a serving of Raisin Bran is 59 grams vs 35 for Lucky Charms. It seems to fill me up better. Could be confirmation bias though.
Ahh, the hidden trick of the “serving size” of various cereals. The only reason Frosted Flakes has “less sugar” than other “healthy” cereals is because they’ve cut the serving size down to like a 3/4 or even 1/2 a cup. This is compared to the standard 1 cup serving size for most cereals.
As far as the satiety of Raisin Bran vs. Lucky Charms, to accurately compare the two you must have comparable serving sizes. Of course 59 grams of Raisin Bran will fill you up more than 35 grams of Lucky Charms. The only reason Lucky Charms is listed as 35 grams per serving is because that is the most they could offer in a serving without going over a certain amount of sugar and calories. That is marketing.
1 cup either way. But sure, I’d expect it to fill you up more, because it’s more calorically dense. The question is whether you want to fill up on all that sugar without a significantly greater micronutrient (vitamin, mineral) increase. Your call. As I said, it does have a little bit more fiber, so that’s a good thing…but if you’re eating lots of fruit, you’re probably getting enough fiber elsewhere.
ETA: And just to be clear, I’m not actually promoting eating Lucky Charms, either. Just that Lucky Charms is one of those “trashy kids” cereals that actually arguably healthier than “healthy grown up” cereals. My point isn’t that Lucky Charms is awesome, but that Raisin Bran is much worse than most people think…even worse than Lucky Charms!
All proteins and carbs have 4 calories per gram. Doesn’t matter what the carb is; wheat, pure sugar, lactose.
All Fats have 9 calories per gram. Doesn’t matter which fat though some are healthier than others.
All that reduces the calory content of carbs is the percentage of water it contains. I’ll ignore fibre although it’s a small additionsal discount. So, for instance, banana is 74% water, strawberries 92%, grapes 81%. Most fruits are about 85-90% water, most vegetables about 95%.
From here. This is why grain products are so difficult with diets. 100g of grains is 400 calories whether it is 100% sugar or 0% sugar. Other than any fibre content it’s all carbs, no fluid.
I have explained this to a few people at work and they have been uniformly horrified when they start working things out when looking at choices. My favorite is the “healthy” crispbread. I tell people to check out the label and they’ll discover that the calorie content by weight is more than the same weight of sugar. And a comparison will show that the only difference in calories with a choc chip cookie is produced by the extra fat in the chocolate chips.
No, it’s because one cup of Lucky Charms has 35 grams of food and a bunch of air. One cup of Raisin Bran has 59 grams of food and not so much air. They’ve switched cereal standard servings to volume instead of grams so that the end consumer can more easily compare and eat a recommended serving using standard kitchen equipment.
But not all cereals use the 1 cup standard. Take Frosted Flakes, for example. They base their serving size on what they want the nutritional profile of a serving to say. So, if they start out with a 10 gram sugar threshold, they don’t actually take any sugar out of the cereal, they just take the cereal out of a serving size.
The serving size is set by the government (and has been since the Nutritional Legislation and Enforcement Act of 1990). As noted, it’s a uniform one cup volume.
Huh? I’ve purchased cereal with serving sizes that aren’t one cup.
Here’s one: Special K, 3/4 cup serving size.
And another, All-Bran Original, serving size 1/2 cup.
It’s all over the place in my experience.
Hmm. Then not only are most sugary cereals bad for you; they’re apparently illegal too! :eek:
I have cereal in my pantry with serving sizes of 2/3 cup, 1 cup, and 3/4 cup right now, but they are all around 55 grams per serving.
There is a lot of manipulation of serving sizes to get to a desired marketing tactic. I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter spray has 0 calories per serving. Wow! That’s great! I can use a bunch! Ennnnnnk! Wrong. They make a serving just a couple of squirts because anything that has less than 5 calories can be rounded down to 0. So each serving of ICBINB spray has 4 calories. The whole bottle has about 900.
Ah yes, I knew I’d find an article.
How is that high fat? 12 calories out of 190? Cheerios has more. And while 190 per serving isn’t the lowest out there, if you use skim milk (I do), a serving of raisin bran isn’t exactly an order of fries, ISTM. (I love raisin bran, you see! ;))
I use fruit as a gauge of if I’m really hungry or just feel like eating.
Conversation with self:
“I’m starving, I need to eat some [name favorite snack].”
“Eat an orange. Eat as many as you want, if you’re still hungry.”
“I don’t feel like eating an orange, and certainly not more than one.”
“Starving, eh?”
<tips hat to fellow WW member>
Down 30 so far. How about you?