Has a quick trip through the grocery store ever been unnecessarily extended by 30 or 40 precious seconds because some ill-mannered, impolite and impudent fellow shopper was clogging up the traffic traveling through an aisle by – God forbid – reading the fine print on a bag of tortilla chips, a cup of yogurt or a box of cereal? Why do they even care how much sugar, salt, cholesterol, fiber and three or four types of fat reside inside the food items they are about to purchase? If they taste good and provide immense pleasure, who gives a hoot that eating 2 pounds of pretzels a week is going to reduce your life span by 90 days?
Let’s get right to the point. I have a confession to make, and, if you and I shop at the same grocery store, you’re just going to have to deal with the fact that I’ve become a label reader. For the sake of brevity – you already know that my newfound shopping habits have the potential to cause you to miss the opening kickoff or be late for your yoga class – today, we’re going to deal only with cereal.
We’ll start with Grape-Nuts, a product I have been devouring with great pleasure for countless decades because it tastes good and is far crunchier than any food I have ever encountered. Besides its amazing crunch factor, its versatility is beyond belief. You can enjoy it in milk – Grape-Nuts remain crunchy even when wet; I can’t explain it – mixed with yogurt or poured over stir-fried vegetables. You can even reach into the box and pull out a handful or two as a refreshing and invigorating afternoon snack. I know what you’re thinking, but the handful thing is perfectly hygienic. My kids never ate Grape-Nuts, and, to this day, my wife looks upon them with what I can only describe as disdain. Possibly scorn.
Before we go any further, I should attempt an explanation of how this wonderful food item got its name. After all, grapes are not on the list of ingredients – we’ll get to that shortly – I’ve never known anyone to eat them with grapes, and I’ve searched inside the box unsuccessfully for a tough shell around an edible kernel. To try to solve this enigma, I visited my go-to research source for just about nothing. According to Wikipedia, Grape-Nuts were developed by C.W. Post in 1897 and were originally presented to the public as a “food for brain and nerve centres.” It’s been promoted as a healthy cereal by such luminaries as Sheriff Andy Taylor and Deputy Barney Fife and by Euell Gibbons, who apparently reminded watchers of black-and-white TV sets that many parts of a pine tree are edible. I guess you can check that out for yourself. I won’t be participating.
So here’s the important thing: Not only are Grape-Nuts delicious, crunchy and versatile, they also are healthier than most breakfast food. How do I know that? Last year, when my wife and I started reading labels, we discovered that one serving of my favorite cereal has only .5 grams of polyunsaturated fat and absolutely none of three other fats; no cholesterol; a small amount of sodium; 7 grams of fiber; and no added sugar. Half a cup of the world’s best cereal also provides you with at least 40% of what you need in a day in terms of iron, thiamin, niacin, vitamin B6 and folate. Grape-Nuts’ ingredients? Whole grain wheat flour, malted barley flour, salt and dried yeast.
Compare that with some other cereals with healthy sounding names. Great Grains? That appears to be something you might want to eat to start your day off right – that is, until you realize that a .8-cup serving contains 13 grams of sugar, which is never a good thing. And that stuff the Kelce brothers are hawking these days? I’ll admit that Jason and Travis are both Hall-of-Fame-worthy athletes, but their cereal has minimal fiber, 11 grams of sugar per serving and a list of ingredients too long to count. I’m thinking maybe 100 or so. One for each yard on a football field?
And what about Smart Start? Not much fat but kind of weak on fiber and packing a pretty powerful sugar punch at 18 grams per serving. Doesn’t seem all that smart to me. Oatmeal Crisp with raisins sounds reasonably healthy but loads you up with 17 grams of sugar per one-cup serving. Good old Cap’n Crunch comes in at 16 grams of sugar per cup.
Of course, you can decide for yourself which cereal, if any, to buy. But pay no attention to those fellow shoppers who see you as standing in the way of breaking the record for fastest trip through the grocery store. There’s no telling what you can do with those extra 90 days at the end of your life.
By Brian Sherman
