I sat in front of my computer the other morning with my usual morning bowl of fibre1 cereal. Utilizing my multi-tasking skills I was also checking my NRC listserv when I stumbled across an article that caught my eye. The article, which was published in The Calgary Herald on Monday was about how to choose a healthy breakfast cereal. I read as I munched away on my cereal and began to feel unsettled by the message the article was conveying.
The article described the important things to look for when shopping for breakfast cereals: sodium, fibre, and sugar, with a strong emphasis on sodium in particular. I'm not suggesting that choosing cereals that are low in sodium isn't a good idea, but what I am concerned with is how the article will be interpreted by readers. The article refers to the November 2008 issue of Consumer Reports, a magazine which published a ranked list of packaged cereals based on their nutritional value. In this study Cheerios came in first place for its overall good nutrition score. It is important to point out that the Consumer Report study ranked cereals on a point scale with low sugar and high fibre content ranking as most important...not sodium content. Also important is that Consumer Reports is an American based magazine, and we know that American breakfast cereals can have a very different nutritional value than Canadian breakfast cereals due to fortification regulations.
So I conducted a little experiment of my own and evaluated the nutritional content of a few breakfast cereals using the nutrition information available on the products' Canadian websites. I found out that Cheerios didn't actually rank in first place in my little study, it was Kashi GOLEAN, which didn't even make the Consumer Report list!
The purpose of this post isn't to completely bash the article I reviewed but rather point out some key flaws. Firstly, as nutrition professionals we have to be careful what we emphasize to the public as being important. Is it really important to consider a difference of 100mg of sodium important for deciding between two products? I mean sure, it would be nice to have a breakfast cereal with less than 140mg of sodium per serving as the article suggests, but if that product happens to be much higher in sugar, or lower in fibre does the tradeoff really make it a better choice? We need to educate people to make healthy choices all around, considering more than just one nutrient in isolation, but rather based on a products entire nutrition profile.
We also need to consider our sources and use Canadian nutrition information when possible. I found the information for my mini-comparison easily by looking it up on company's websites. I assume the article referred to Consumer Report for the simple fact that it was convenient, but it would have been better to provide Canadian information. Interested readers might compare the nutrition information in this article to that of their cereal boxes at home and be confused due to numbers that don't match.
Lastly, I think we really need to be careful when selecting which battles to fight. When it comes to monitoring sodium intakes, breakfast cereals are likely not an area of major concern. We need to be careful not to make people paranoid that the breakfast cereal they currently eat at home is a major culprit plaguing their efforts to cut sodium from their diets. We know that fast foods and preparred foods play a much larger role! The last thing we want to do is scare people into avoiding breakfast cereals all together and unknowingly opt for 'worse' breakfast options like PopTarts or prepared muffins.
The article described the important things to look for when shopping for breakfast cereals: sodium, fibre, and sugar, with a strong emphasis on sodium in particular. I'm not suggesting that choosing cereals that are low in sodium isn't a good idea, but what I am concerned with is how the article will be interpreted by readers. The article refers to the November 2008 issue of Consumer Reports, a magazine which published a ranked list of packaged cereals based on their nutritional value. In this study Cheerios came in first place for its overall good nutrition score. It is important to point out that the Consumer Report study ranked cereals on a point scale with low sugar and high fibre content ranking as most important...not sodium content. Also important is that Consumer Reports is an American based magazine, and we know that American breakfast cereals can have a very different nutritional value than Canadian breakfast cereals due to fortification regulations.
So I conducted a little experiment of my own and evaluated the nutritional content of a few breakfast cereals using the nutrition information available on the products' Canadian websites. I found out that Cheerios didn't actually rank in first place in my little study, it was Kashi GOLEAN, which didn't even make the Consumer Report list!The purpose of this post isn't to completely bash the article I reviewed but rather point out some key flaws. Firstly, as nutrition professionals we have to be careful what we emphasize to the public as being important. Is it really important to consider a difference of 100mg of sodium important for deciding between two products? I mean sure, it would be nice to have a breakfast cereal with less than 140mg of sodium per serving as the article suggests, but if that product happens to be much higher in sugar, or lower in fibre does the tradeoff really make it a better choice? We need to educate people to make healthy choices all around, considering more than just one nutrient in isolation, but rather based on a products entire nutrition profile.
We also need to consider our sources and use Canadian nutrition information when possible. I found the information for my mini-comparison easily by looking it up on company's websites. I assume the article referred to Consumer Report for the simple fact that it was convenient, but it would have been better to provide Canadian information. Interested readers might compare the nutrition information in this article to that of their cereal boxes at home and be confused due to numbers that don't match.
Lastly, I think we really need to be careful when selecting which battles to fight. When it comes to monitoring sodium intakes, breakfast cereals are likely not an area of major concern. We need to be careful not to make people paranoid that the breakfast cereal they currently eat at home is a major culprit plaguing their efforts to cut sodium from their diets. We know that fast foods and preparred foods play a much larger role! The last thing we want to do is scare people into avoiding breakfast cereals all together and unknowingly opt for 'worse' breakfast options like PopTarts or prepared muffins.
After I posted this, I remembered an episode of Marketplace I watched in November of 2007 called Calorie Confidential which looked at the calories & sodium contents of items at various restaurant chains and pointed out the important role government & the food industry plays in our nutrition. Check out the segment online at http://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/calorie_confidential/it was really interesting!
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