Food is Fuel, How Well Are You Fueling Your Body? Your Children's Bodies?

 Is eating the standard cold cereal like eating a Twinkie in the morning?  Check out this eye opening report of the most popular cold cereal brands.

 Reported  by Environmental Working Group:

Cereals: Best and Good 

December 2011

Read the whole report at:    http://breakingnews.ewg.org/report/sugar_in_childrens_cereals/best_and_worst_cereals/ &utm_source=2011cerealyeand&utm_medium=email&utm_content=image&utm_campaign=food

10 Worst Children's Cereals

Based on percent sugar by weight

1	Kellogg's Honey Smacks	55.6%
2	Post Golden Crisp	51.9%
3	Kellogg's Froot Loops Marshmallow	48.3%
4	Quaker Oats Cap'n Crunch's OOPS! All Berries	46.9%
5	Quaker Oats Cap'n Crunch Original	44.4%
6	Quaker Oats Oh!s	44.4%
7	Kellogg's Smorz	43.3%
8	Kellogg's Apple Jacks	42.9%
9	Quaker Oats Cap'n Crunch's Crunch Berries	42.3%
10	Kellogg's Froot Loops Original	41.4%

Source: EWG analysis of nutrition labels for 84 children's cereals

 

All cereals on this list pass proposed federal guidelines* on sugar, sodium, fat and whole-grain content. They are free of artificial flavors, colors and artificial sweeteners such as aspartame and sucralose.

Best Cereals

Ask your store to carry these brands, which offer cereals free of pesticides
and genetically modified ingredients:
[see full list of best cereals]

• Ambrosial Granola
• Go Raw
• Grandy Oats
• Kaia Foods
• Laughing Giraffe
• Lydia's Organic
• Nature's Path Organics

6 Good Big-Brand Cereals

These meet nutrition guidelines and are easy to find but may include ingredients that are genetically modified or grown with pesticides:

• Kellogg's Mini-Wheats:
  Unfrosted Bite- Size,
  Frosted Big Bite,
  Frosted Bite-Size,
  Frosted Little Bite
• General Mills Cheerios Original**
• General Mills Kix Original**

Source: EWG analysis of nutrition labels for 84 children's cereals.

* The federal Interagency Working Group proposed voluntary guidelines for sugar, sodium, saturated fat and whole grain content (IWG 2011).
** These meet the Interagency Working Group's interim 2016 sodium guideline but not the final guideline scheduled to take effect in 2021 (IWG 2011).

cancer food bible - Anti-Cancer, A New Way of Life

www.anticancerbook.com

If you have been diagnosed with cancer, or someone you love has been, the “must read” food bible is David Servan-Schreiber’s  Anti-Cancer, A New Way of Life.    This is a surprisingly readable handbook for eating to “not” feed the cancer while you fuel your body.   There are so many amazing stories in this book that it is hard for me to pick one out.   Servan-Schreiber is an MD and PhD as well as a cancer survivor, and makes the point that if you don’t change your life and the way you deal with it, the possibility of survival dramatically declines.    A friend asked him (after his successful cancer treatment) what he’d done to change his life to avoid recurrence.   The idea that he needed to change his life hadn’t even occurred to him.   When his cancer recurred, he got the message.   This book is an excellent chronicle of our changing (changed) environment and how it has changed the food we eat, including simple steps to minimize impact in your life.   Every person should read the book whether they’ve looked cancer in the face or not.

Oatmeal. Feed your body – feed your skin.

Oatmeal - good for what ails you!

Winter Hideaway

The sun is shining on glistening beautiful pure white snow.   It is -1⁰.    Thinking about something to fuel my body, I remember that oatmeal commercial, “Cccccold ccccereal…..brrrrrr.”    Exactly.   Quick oats take only a minute to cook, a little honey, maybe some cinnamon.    Mm mm good.  

Oatmeal offers a lot of benefits beyond warming your stomach in the morning – although that is nothing to scoff at.   Warm food warms your stomach, enhancing digestion, and warming you from the inside out.  But oatmeal offers a lot of other benefits, too.  Its nutritional benefits include antioxidants, B vitamins, fiber, proteins, trace minerals, and soluble and insoluble fiber. Both soluble and insoluble fiber bind to toxins in the body and carry them away, resulting in reduced skin blemishes and the development of new skin cells.

Speaking of skin…..   Not only is it the largest organ in the body, but it is your first line of defense against infection, cold, heat, and it also helps the body rid itself of toxins.   Oatmeal nourishes the skin, helping it maintain that youthful radiant glow.  Oat proteins include collagen and elastin, which are essential to skin health and constitute the cement that binds skin cells.   Antioxidants and trace minerals promote healthy collagen, which in turn promotes skin rejuvenation and slows the aging process. B vitamins are also essential for ensuring cellular regeneration, protecting skin from environmental stressors and infection.
Oatmeal not only strengthens skin from the inside out, but it has the ability to strengthen skin from the outside in. It is used in moisturizing products to help reduce rough, peeling, and cracked skin. Oatmeal can keep skin properly hydrated and moisturized. As an exfoliant, it also removes dead cells and reduces redness and irritation by removing dirt and oil from pores.

On the inside/out nutritional front, the health benefits associated with oatmeal include its cancer-fighting properties (antioxidants) and reduction of risks associated with diabetes and heart disease. You have probably heard that recent studies show oatmeal helps reduce bad cholesterol (LDL), while raising good cholesterol (HDL.)

 Are you confused by the options at the grocery store?    “Quick” and “old-fashioned” seem fairly easily explained, but what are these “steel cut” oats?   Here’s a quick shopping guide.   “Instant” is prepackaged and presweetened usually in single serving packets.   Quick oats cook in one minute.  Old fashioned cook in five minutes.   “Steel cut” cuts the whole oat, rather than flattens it as in the first three processes.   Not surprisingly, there are also variations in nutrition in the different processing.  As a rule, the more processing, the more nutrition is lost, and, as in “instant” the more additives.

So, go ahead and enjoy a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast on a cold winter morning.   Don’t be afraid to add honey or maple syrup to sweeten it, or milk or juice for variety.  Your skin will thank you!