"Breakfast was the most important meal of the day — until America ruined it"
Sunna_W
Posts: 744 Member
What do you (generally) eat for breakfast these days and how has that changed over the years? Do you think that your weight / health issues are (were) related to sugar / grains?
See the Washington Post article below by Michael Ruhlman (reference is below).
___________________________________________________________________________________
Whatever happened to “a balanced breakfast?”
When I was growing up in the late 1960s, Dad, who did the grocery shopping every Saturday morning, didn’t think twice about putting Cap’n Crunch on the list, unless it was to ask if I wouldn’t rather have Quisp. I didn’t see cornflakes until I was in college. By the time I was a parent, I had dutifully moved on to Special K and fed my toddlers Cheerios, 10 percent of which invariably crunched under foot.
The first two cereals, part of the sugar-cereal boom that began in the 1950s, are nearly equal parts corn flour and sugar. But even my Special K is about 13 percent sugar. Cheerios comes in at the lowest, between 3 and 4 percent. But I wonder if sugar, the current nutrition bugaboo, even matters given that they’re all composed mainly of processed grains.
Is it possible that most boxed breakfast cereals, an American staple found in up to 90 percent of American cupboards, a $10 billion industry, might be equally bad for you, and especially so in the morning?
Only recently, as fat America seeks to understand the roots of its eating disorder, has the-most-important-meal-of-the-day dictum begun to be questioned in the media. It’s probably more accurate to call breakfast the most dangerous meal of the day. Not only because of the sugar in so many breakfast cereals, but also because the refined grains they’re made of are virtually the same thing, once they reach your bloodstream.
For a book about grocery stores, I asked to go shopping with my physician, Roxanne Sukol, preventive medicine specialist at the Cleveland Clinic, medical director of its Wellness Enterprise, and something of a nutrition geek (“They didn’t teach us anything about nutrition in medical school,” she told me).
When we arrived at the breakfast cereal real estate, she pulled a box of Cheerios off the shelf, one with a bowl shaped like a heart and a message stating it can lower cholesterol. “The first ingredient is whole-grain oats,” Sukol said, reading the label. “So far, so good. But the second ingredient is modified food starch, and the third is food starch — that’s nonsense. That’s just like corn syrup.” The fourth ingredient was sugar, followed by salt, followed by an additive. “I don’t know what this is — tripotassium phosphate — but I’m pretty sure it’s not food.
“It’s disingenuous to call this a whole-grain product,” she concluded.
All the cereal, whole grain or not, is processed in a way to give it indefinite shelf life. As the nutritious parts of our food are what goes bad on the shelf, just about every processed-grain product on the shelf is nutritionally barren.
Sukol walked me through the basic physiology. When sugar enters our bloodstream, the hormone insulin is released to deliver the sugar to its proper destination. If more sugar comes in than the insulin can transport, the sugar is stored as fat and the insulin system is strained, which can result in diabetes and other diet-related diseases.
Sukol likened the insulin to a valet car service and the sugar to the cars it parks. If the guests’ arrival is spread out, the valet service can handle them efficiently; if everyone shows up at once, cars get backed up. Same thing with sugar. What this has to do with breakfast is that refined wheat, rice and corn, what most mainstream American breakfast cereals are primarily composed of, is quickly converted to sugar on entering your system, requiring that exact same insulin response. I’m not talking about the outliers, those unsweetened, multi-grained cereals such as Ezekiel 4:9, or those like Love Grown that replace refined grains with beans. I’m talking about the vast majority of the cereal aisle. When you see someone spooning sugar onto a bowl of cornflakes or Cheerios, you should not see the act as sweetening something that’s good for you, you should see it as someone spooning sugar onto sugar.
As numerous journalists such as Michael Moss and Gary Taubes have noted, increasing evidence suggests that two of the biggest culprits in America’s bad health are sugar and refined grains, in that order. Sugar, a carbohydrate, now seems to be the chief villain. (In his recent book “The Case Against Sugar,” Taubes suggests it should be considered toxic in the same way cigarettes are.) But its nutritional cousin, the refined-grain carbohydrate, may be a close second.
Cereal was not always the morning staple that it is today. It only became so at about the same time that our health problems began to be documented, in the 1960s. A coincidence?
According to NPD Group market analyst Harry Balzer, cereal was initially eaten on Sundays, when the women of our churchgoing nation didn’t have time to make the family breakfast. Once women entered the workforce, though, we began pouring our convenient breakfasts out of a box in significant numbers daily, a trend that peaked in 1995, Balzer said.
But it may not even just be cereal that’s had such a huge impact on American health. “Maybe the problem,” Sukol said, “is the huge quantity of nutritionally bankrupt foods that are supposed to stand in for breakfast.”
By this she means anything composed primarily of refined wheat, which would be, um, 90 percent of the American breakfast repertoire: pancakes, waffles, bagels, toast, muffins, biscuits, scones, croissants, and so on.
Moreover, eating this stuff on an empty stomach (i.e. in the morning), may be especially bad for your system, as there is little fiber, fat or protein in your system to slow the sugar absorption. Our breakfast staples might all best be considered as a single category of food: sugar bomb.
We don’t know if time of day matters for certain. Sukol calls it only a hunch, but she nevertheless recommends that all her patients avoid what she calls “stripped” carbs, carbohydrates stripped of their fiber matrix, before noon.
What does she recommend for breakfast? Steel-cut oats, not cooked but rather soaked overnight with a dash of vinegar. I add whole-fat Greek yogurt and some nuts if I have them — it’s a satisfying small dish. Beans are great too. I had a delicious dish of lentils and a small amount of basmati rice, a preparation called kitchari, at the new vegetarian restaurant abcV in Manhattan, the other morning, and my companion had congee made with black rice and millet, in a seaweed and mushroom broth. Excellent breakfasts. An egg and some cheese are also a nourishing and satisfying way to begin the day.
If those people who argue that sugar and refined grains are at the heart of America’s diabetes and obesity epidemic are right, it throws a different light on the cereal aisle. That hulking behemoth in the middle of the grocery store, the racks of cereal, is stripped-carb and sugar ground zero, representing a kind of unrecognized terrorism wrought on parents by our own food makers in every city, town and suburb of America.
I don’t think these products should be banned. I know a lot of people who would be seriously bummed if you took away their Cocoa Puffs and Honey-Nut Cheerios. What I want is for people to be aware of what they’re eating and how it affects their body and purchase food based on that knowledge. Consumers’ choices — or their dollars, rather — do more to determine what’s on the grocery store shelves than anything else. That’s the real way to effect change in our collective health.
Ref: By Michael Ruhlman May 15, 2017 Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/breakfast-was-the-most-important-meal-of-the-day--until-america-ruined-it/2017/05/12/f1d0e128-368c-11e7-b4ee-434b6d506b37_story.html?utm_term=.c8a0e2bf47f1
Ruhlman’s latest book is “Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America.”
See the Washington Post article below by Michael Ruhlman (reference is below).
___________________________________________________________________________________
Whatever happened to “a balanced breakfast?”
When I was growing up in the late 1960s, Dad, who did the grocery shopping every Saturday morning, didn’t think twice about putting Cap’n Crunch on the list, unless it was to ask if I wouldn’t rather have Quisp. I didn’t see cornflakes until I was in college. By the time I was a parent, I had dutifully moved on to Special K and fed my toddlers Cheerios, 10 percent of which invariably crunched under foot.
The first two cereals, part of the sugar-cereal boom that began in the 1950s, are nearly equal parts corn flour and sugar. But even my Special K is about 13 percent sugar. Cheerios comes in at the lowest, between 3 and 4 percent. But I wonder if sugar, the current nutrition bugaboo, even matters given that they’re all composed mainly of processed grains.
Is it possible that most boxed breakfast cereals, an American staple found in up to 90 percent of American cupboards, a $10 billion industry, might be equally bad for you, and especially so in the morning?
Only recently, as fat America seeks to understand the roots of its eating disorder, has the-most-important-meal-of-the-day dictum begun to be questioned in the media. It’s probably more accurate to call breakfast the most dangerous meal of the day. Not only because of the sugar in so many breakfast cereals, but also because the refined grains they’re made of are virtually the same thing, once they reach your bloodstream.
For a book about grocery stores, I asked to go shopping with my physician, Roxanne Sukol, preventive medicine specialist at the Cleveland Clinic, medical director of its Wellness Enterprise, and something of a nutrition geek (“They didn’t teach us anything about nutrition in medical school,” she told me).
When we arrived at the breakfast cereal real estate, she pulled a box of Cheerios off the shelf, one with a bowl shaped like a heart and a message stating it can lower cholesterol. “The first ingredient is whole-grain oats,” Sukol said, reading the label. “So far, so good. But the second ingredient is modified food starch, and the third is food starch — that’s nonsense. That’s just like corn syrup.” The fourth ingredient was sugar, followed by salt, followed by an additive. “I don’t know what this is — tripotassium phosphate — but I’m pretty sure it’s not food.
“It’s disingenuous to call this a whole-grain product,” she concluded.
All the cereal, whole grain or not, is processed in a way to give it indefinite shelf life. As the nutritious parts of our food are what goes bad on the shelf, just about every processed-grain product on the shelf is nutritionally barren.
Sukol walked me through the basic physiology. When sugar enters our bloodstream, the hormone insulin is released to deliver the sugar to its proper destination. If more sugar comes in than the insulin can transport, the sugar is stored as fat and the insulin system is strained, which can result in diabetes and other diet-related diseases.
Sukol likened the insulin to a valet car service and the sugar to the cars it parks. If the guests’ arrival is spread out, the valet service can handle them efficiently; if everyone shows up at once, cars get backed up. Same thing with sugar. What this has to do with breakfast is that refined wheat, rice and corn, what most mainstream American breakfast cereals are primarily composed of, is quickly converted to sugar on entering your system, requiring that exact same insulin response. I’m not talking about the outliers, those unsweetened, multi-grained cereals such as Ezekiel 4:9, or those like Love Grown that replace refined grains with beans. I’m talking about the vast majority of the cereal aisle. When you see someone spooning sugar onto a bowl of cornflakes or Cheerios, you should not see the act as sweetening something that’s good for you, you should see it as someone spooning sugar onto sugar.
As numerous journalists such as Michael Moss and Gary Taubes have noted, increasing evidence suggests that two of the biggest culprits in America’s bad health are sugar and refined grains, in that order. Sugar, a carbohydrate, now seems to be the chief villain. (In his recent book “The Case Against Sugar,” Taubes suggests it should be considered toxic in the same way cigarettes are.) But its nutritional cousin, the refined-grain carbohydrate, may be a close second.
Cereal was not always the morning staple that it is today. It only became so at about the same time that our health problems began to be documented, in the 1960s. A coincidence?
According to NPD Group market analyst Harry Balzer, cereal was initially eaten on Sundays, when the women of our churchgoing nation didn’t have time to make the family breakfast. Once women entered the workforce, though, we began pouring our convenient breakfasts out of a box in significant numbers daily, a trend that peaked in 1995, Balzer said.
But it may not even just be cereal that’s had such a huge impact on American health. “Maybe the problem,” Sukol said, “is the huge quantity of nutritionally bankrupt foods that are supposed to stand in for breakfast.”
By this she means anything composed primarily of refined wheat, which would be, um, 90 percent of the American breakfast repertoire: pancakes, waffles, bagels, toast, muffins, biscuits, scones, croissants, and so on.
Moreover, eating this stuff on an empty stomach (i.e. in the morning), may be especially bad for your system, as there is little fiber, fat or protein in your system to slow the sugar absorption. Our breakfast staples might all best be considered as a single category of food: sugar bomb.
We don’t know if time of day matters for certain. Sukol calls it only a hunch, but she nevertheless recommends that all her patients avoid what she calls “stripped” carbs, carbohydrates stripped of their fiber matrix, before noon.
What does she recommend for breakfast? Steel-cut oats, not cooked but rather soaked overnight with a dash of vinegar. I add whole-fat Greek yogurt and some nuts if I have them — it’s a satisfying small dish. Beans are great too. I had a delicious dish of lentils and a small amount of basmati rice, a preparation called kitchari, at the new vegetarian restaurant abcV in Manhattan, the other morning, and my companion had congee made with black rice and millet, in a seaweed and mushroom broth. Excellent breakfasts. An egg and some cheese are also a nourishing and satisfying way to begin the day.
If those people who argue that sugar and refined grains are at the heart of America’s diabetes and obesity epidemic are right, it throws a different light on the cereal aisle. That hulking behemoth in the middle of the grocery store, the racks of cereal, is stripped-carb and sugar ground zero, representing a kind of unrecognized terrorism wrought on parents by our own food makers in every city, town and suburb of America.
I don’t think these products should be banned. I know a lot of people who would be seriously bummed if you took away their Cocoa Puffs and Honey-Nut Cheerios. What I want is for people to be aware of what they’re eating and how it affects their body and purchase food based on that knowledge. Consumers’ choices — or their dollars, rather — do more to determine what’s on the grocery store shelves than anything else. That’s the real way to effect change in our collective health.
Ref: By Michael Ruhlman May 15, 2017 Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/breakfast-was-the-most-important-meal-of-the-day--until-america-ruined-it/2017/05/12/f1d0e128-368c-11e7-b4ee-434b6d506b37_story.html?utm_term=.c8a0e2bf47f1
Ruhlman’s latest book is “Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America.”
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Replies
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I haven't eaten breakfast since the day I moved out of my mom's house, 18 years ago.12
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I've read and enjoyed several of Ruhlman's books about food (the focus was more on cooking, not nutrition). Disappointing to see him throwing his hat in the "toxic sugar" ring.18
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Adam Ruins Everything did a great episode on nutrition...it's worth checking out the entire episode. But his findings and reflection on cereal is spot-on: https://www.facebook.com/trutvadamruinseverything/videos/453909201478493/?video_source=pages_finch_main_video2
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There is nothing I love more...NOTHING!...than sugary box cereal. I eat Cheerios for breakfast, but I fantasize daily about a huge bowl of Captain Crunch or Apple Jacks or Frosted Flakes.5
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I usually have a couple of eggs and some Greek yogurt. Otherwise, I know I'm going to have a really tough time meeting my protein goal for the day.
HOWEVER, I am not above eating cake for breakfast on occasion, and my kids eat cereal for breakfast probably 3-4 days a week.7 -
For the past 30+ years I've rarely eaten breakfast. It's not a rule, I simply rarely get hungry until afternoon so that's when I first eat.
I also was an American child in the late 60's and breakfast was almost always sugary cereal. Even when we had something like Cheerios or corn flakes we added sugar to make it taste better. I still occasionally eat cereal now and then but almost always as a dessert or snack.
But no, I do not think sugar was related to my weight gain since I was thin for about 40 years while eating pretty much the same percentage of sugar as when I started gaining. I gained weight because I overate, but I wasn't eating a lot of sugar. I'm much more likely to overeat fat than sugar. There are few foods that I really love that aren't high in fat, either naturally or because I add too much olive oil.
If I had to blame one food (and I don't since the food didn't jump into my mouth on it's own) it would have to be extra virgin olive oil.4 -
I love cereal as a snack, but as a breakfast it is to me a calorie bomb that does not keep me satisfied for long. I do take 1 serving of whole grain total (because of all the vitamins / minerals in it) and crumble it up to put on top of yogurt - much more nutritious than granola and fewer calories. I eat Cap'n Crunch or FrootLoops for snack while I'm watching TV.
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I do 16:8IF as part of my maintenance plan and don't eat in the morning, (I break fast at around 11am).
And I used to be overweight because I consumed too many calories, not because of any certain food or ingredient. I've now been maintaining a bmi of around a 20 for 4 years, because I've learned how CICO works and I now consume the appropriate amount of calories for my weight management goals. I continue to eat grains and sugar every day and have no problem fitting them into my calorie goals.3 -
Breakfast cereal has been a part of my daily routine (whether in the morning or at night) and I have had no problems. I try to eat it alongside some eggs since the carbs tend to trigger me to be hungrier by themselves. I eat the cereal followed by the eggs and I'm good to go for hours. I think it's all about knowing the proper portion size (the average bowl is around 2 cups, a serving is 3/4 to 1 cup).3
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Sorry, I can't stop thinking 'Make American Breakfast Great Again!' every times I see this thread title.
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We don’t know if time of day matters for certain. Sukol calls it only a hunch, but she nevertheless recommends that all her patients avoid what she calls “stripped” carbs, carbohydrates stripped of their fiber matrix, before noon.
If I recall correctly the research about nutrient absortion and meal timing has shown that neither fasting or frecuency has an effect in the metabolism and absortion.What I want is for people to be aware of what they’re eating
He critizices a lot one aspect while ignoring all the aspects of the obesity epidemic. He is right in that high suggary and processed grains in the cereals are not healthy but it's unfair to let out all the fast food avaible in the market that is being eat at all hours. If overconsumption is the cause, the article is a bit misleading only showing us one culprit.7 -
I consider cereal to be a snack, not a breakfast. I did have a bowl of multigrain Cheerios for breakfast on Saturday because we didn't really have anything else, and I was in a hurry. It did basically nothing for me.1
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Cereal is a treat, it is not breakfast. Nothing wrong with treats, but I prefer to have e.g. a slice of cake if it is going to be a treat for breakfast. Far more tasty.4
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I still think lack of movement is the culprit, which also started around that time. Kids used to run around and play outside.4
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I ate either Cheerios, Rice Krispies, Corn Flakes, Oatmeal, or Cream of Wheat pretty much every day as a kid...never had any weight issues. I didn't have any weight issues until I was in my 30s and went from being a very active person to taking a desk job.11
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As a kid, my go to breakfast was Cap'n Crunch cereal and I never had weight issues until I became pregnant with number one son. I put on 70 pounds eating for two which was suggested by my doctor, who was very much old school.4
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I never ate cold cereal as a child, so no, that did not contribute to my obesity. For breakfast I ate eggs, cheese, olives, olive oil, greek yogurt, hummus, broad beans and a few other things and I became morbidly obese. It's so disappointing how they're always looking for a scapegoat and reduce issues to something laughable looked at through a very narrow lense. The issue with cereal is not the sugar or the refining, the issue is that they're generally not filling. Ezekiel 4:9 is just as bad as Froot Loops in that regard, if not worse (because it contains less air making the serving volume even smaller).
No, cereal is not the reason people are obese, nor is sugar. Eating too much is, and reducing all the reasons that cause that then distilling them into one substance has never worked. It never worked with fat, and it won't work with sugar. People need to take a hint and stop looking for grand villains.5 -
Hate cereal, have always hated cereal- still managed to be obese.5
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What do you (generally) eat for breakfast these days and how has that changed over the years? Do you think that your weight / health issues are (were) related to sugar / grains?
Age 12 and under- not overweight
Cereal with whole milk... type varied, often sugary
Age 13-25ish- not overweight
Skipped breakfast mostly... sometimes dinner leftovers, canned soup, almost never cereal or traditional breakfast foods
25ish-40ish- overweight/obese
Dinner leftovers, very rarely cereal, granola bars, toast, bagel
Current- less overweight
Greek yogurt, granola bars, cereal with milk, sandwich, dinner leftovers, fruit, cottage cheese (about 200-300 calories)
I don't like traditional breakfast foods for breakfast usually.
My weight gain is the result of consuming too many calories for my activity level. Not sugar. Not grains. Not meal timing. Too many calories.
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amusedmonkey wrote: »I never ate cold cereal as a child, so no, that did not contribute to my obesity. For breakfast I ate eggs, cheese, olives, olive oil, greek yogurt, hummus, broad beans and a few other things and I became morbidly obese. It's so disappointing how they're always looking for a scapegoat and reduce issues to something laughable looked at through a very narrow lense. The issue with cereal is not the sugar or the refining, the issue is that they're generally not filling. Ezekiel 4:9 is just as bad as Froot Loops in that regard, if not worse (because it contains less air making the serving volume even smaller).
No, cereal is not the reason people are obese, nor is sugar. Eating too much is, and reducing all the reasons that cause that then distilling them into one substance has never worked. It never worked with fat, and it won't work with sugar. People need to take a hint and stop looking for grand villains.
So much the bolded... people are always looking for a scapegoat. There is only one root cause of every single person's weight gain - and that is the consumption of too many calories for their individual expenditure. That's it.5 -
I have coffee for breakfast... why would I eat when I'm not hungry?!2
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The only reason I avoid cereal is because I can easily eat through an entire box in one sitting. It is not evil or unhealthy if it doesn't put you over your calories.
And breakfast is not the most important meal of the day.0 -
Protein keeps me satiated much longer than carbs or sugar, anyway. Even if that's a psychosomatic effect, I'll take it over eating more. In my line of work, it's a little frowned upon and it just gets to be a hassle to stop and eat all of the time. I also just prefer things like eggs and bacon over cereal or toast or bagels. That said, bagels are jam-packed with protein and can easily be topped with sources of fat and protein.0
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Breakfast ... have heard of it before ... Nowadays I only eat breakfast on weekends as I have no time nor interest in eating when I get up at 5:30am and have to be at work by 7:15.0
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cwolfman13 wrote: »I ate either Cheerios, Rice Krispies, Corn Flakes, Oatmeal, or Cream of Wheat pretty much every day as a kid...never had any weight issues. I didn't have any weight issues until I was in my 30s and went from being a very active person to taking a desk job.
That was me. Except it was my late 20s.0 -
I grew up eating Rice Krispies, Frosted Flakes, Corn Pops etc with 2% milk and a glass of OJ for breakfast. Or frozen waffles with pancake syrup. I was a skinny kid, and have never been obese. I got to the upper end of the healthy weight range for my height in my 30s, because I stopped being active and started stress eating. This need to find one simple thing to pin the obesity epidemic on is such an immature way of looking at things; life is complicated.4
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Cereal is definitely a snack item. I always preferred it before bed rather than early morning. I have to have eggs if I'm hungry in the morning.0
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I consider cereal to be a snack, not a breakfast. I did have a bowl of multigrain Cheerios for breakfast on Saturday because we didn't really have anything else, and I was in a hurry. It did basically nothing for me.
Me too. I save cereal for a nighttime snack or dessert. I usually have 100g of whatever cereal i have, this plus full cream milk is a calorie bomb, so it's a very rare thing here. I have little self control when it comes to breakfast cereal...0 -
What do you (generally) eat for breakfast these days and how has that changed over the years?
I eat eggs and vegetables. I mostly like savory breakfasts.
When I was a kid I mostly ate eggs (I hated cold cereal, always have), sometimes oatmeal. (I still like steel cut oats and eat them sometimes -- the texture is why I prefer them.) We always had pancakes for special weekend occasions, with bacon. I'd sometimes have Eggo frozen waffles during the week as a treat (I was supposed to at least have fruit with them). Don't think that period lasted that long. (Also, I was never fat 'til around age 30.)
For a period of time from my teenage years through my late 20s I skipped breakfast because I wasn't a morning person and was too lazy to get up and make it before I had to be somewhere. For a while in my 30s I ate steel cut oats mostly, eggs occasionally. I was thin during that period. Then I started eating leftover dinner mainly and otherwise not having an organized breakfast (I was having other issues that affected my breakfast choice). When I decided to get back into shape I started with oats and then gravitated to eggs because they had more protein (I usually have cottage cheese or smoked salmon too) and plus were easier to have vegetables with. Stuck with those as my main breakfast because I like them.Do you think that your weight / health issues are (were) related to sugar / grains?
No. I've never been that into grains (other than oatmeal -- I didn't like bread much as a kid and our main other starchy carb was potatoes and as an adult I've never particularly felt compelled to eat starches to excess). I like sugar fine, but my main weakness has been mostly savory foods (and fats as much as carbs).
I'm low carbing now, but mainly due to taste preferences/what makes a meal complete for me. It feels quite indulgent.
Like I said above, I hate all cold cereal and don't understand why people find it tempting, but it's pretty clear there's a huge range of cereals people enjoy. I also grew up at a time when most were not fat and yet everyone ate cereal for breakfast (one reason I resent it is that it was always pushed on me and I had to choke it down and pretend to like it at sleepovers). My sister ate tons of sugary cereals and added sugar to them even (grossed me out as a kid to see her add sugar to Apple Jacks) and yet she has no real sweet tooth as an adult and has never been fat.1
This discussion has been closed.
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