Breakfast “more unhealthy than a doughnut”, world abruptly explodes in confusion
By Paul Smith
Despite people older than you appearing to have grown up strong and healthy, every mouthful of food that passed their lips as a kid was essentially poison. Yes, they may have ate a slice of white bread every day and suffered no ill effects, but they didn’t know the flour and starch would cause lungworm and certain death. Same goes for eggs, fish, red meat, white meat, vegetables and apples. And water. And breakfast cereals, too.
Health campaigners are going to war on the big brands with the help of Channel 4’s Dispatches programme tonight, after researchers measured the amount of sugar and salt in breakfast cereals and made direct comparisons to the most unhealthy alternatives they could think of, ignoring all other nutritional information at hand. For example, in the corner of the British Heart Foundation:
“Researchers discovered a Tesco jam doughnut contained 8.6g of sugar while 30g of Kellogg’s Frosties were laden with 11.1g of sugar. The investigation also showed that 30g bowl of Kellogg’s cornflakes has more salt than a bag of Walkers Ready Salted crisps.”
In retaliation, a Kellogg’s spokes person pointed out:
“The reality is a single serving of Frosties or Coco Pops has the same amount of sugar in it as glass of orange juice or a banana. It’s important to remember that a doughnut contains around 14 times the level of fat as a single bowl of Frosties.”
And a Nestlé spokesperson added:
“On average cereals contribute less than 10 per cent of the average adult daily intake of sugars and less than 6 per cent of the average daily sugar intake in children.”
In other words, as long as you and your kids aren’t eating a box of cereal a day and nothing else, you probably don’t have as much to worry about as the headlines will no doubt suggest.
feral trolley of the week
Look at a pack of butter with the green-yellow-red traffic warnings on. You’d think it was guilty of murder.
I hate this scaremongering
If you were to over-scrutinise everything you eat, you would die of starvation because you wouln’t eat at all
It’s just a case of using some general cop on
Doughnut for brekkie then – may as well.
Even fruit juice is labelled with warnings which indicate it would kill you as soon as look at you. If the sugar in fruit is even vaguely comparable to processed sugar in junk food then no nutritionist would dare suggest that fruit is a healthy option.
Labelling food like this is just misleading, and makes a mockery of the whole traffic light system.
Hey everyone, try my new sugar, carb and salt-free diet aid! It’s called….
… Lard: http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts/fats-and-oils/483/2
I should be in marketing, it’s easy.
a mate at uni was eating a 6-pack of crisps a day (it may have been 12, i cant quite remember). needless to say, he’s now fat. ‘moderation’, people – bloody sooty and sweep taught me that!
[...] Brought into the breakfast debate! [...]