Tuesday, September 05, 2006
No Judd Nelson
But many popular breakfast cereals contain four to six teaspoons of sugar a serving, as much or more sugar as in gooey chocolate bars, according to research commissioned by The Globe and Mail and CTV News.
That data reveal that:
A bowl of Post Sugar-Crisp contains as much sugar as a Mr. Big bar;
A typical serving of Cocoa Puffs is the equivalent of downing a 50-gram bag of Hershey's Kisses;
Starting the day with a serving of Corn Pops, Honeycomb or Lucky Charms is about the same as gobbling a Kit Kat;
Full marks to Don Blair, a spokesman for Kraft Canada Inc.(the maker of the popular cereals Sugar-Crisp and Alpha-Bits) for attempting to stand and face the findings. Kraft has a right to sell their product, the same as parents have a right to better nutritional information. Blair said the company "believes in offering consumers choice, which include cereal varieties that are low in fat and sugar." He noted that Sugar-Crisp, the cereal with the highest sugar content in the Globe/CTV research, is low in fat and a source of five essential nutrients.
Mr. Blair also noted that the recommended serving size of Sugar-Crisps is 30 grams. Since there is no standard serving size for cereal, The Globe and Mail and CTV asked a number of children to pour themselves a serving, and the average was more than 50 grams. Also, children commonly eat more than one bowl of cereal.
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