What's in your breakfast bar? yummy.

[zengrifter]

Behind The Label -
Kellogg's Nutri-Grain Soft Bake Bars

If you 'deskfast' with sugary, fat-filled cereal bars instead of eating
a good breakfast you could be doing untold damage to your body and mind.

By Pat Thomas
TheEcologist.org
6-24-7 | rense.com

Most of us have grown up with the mantra that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Yet 56 per cent of us skips breakfast. The consequences can be dire for the body and the brain, especially in children. Recent research from Reading University found that kids who eat sugary snacks instead of proper breakfasts have the mental reaction times of 70-year-olds.

Instead of breakfast, an increasing number of us eat cereal bars, gulped down on public transport, in the car or at our desks. Cereal bar manufacturers have even coined a phrase for it: 'deskfast'. Amazingly the ubiquitous cereal bar didn't even exist until 1997. Since then it has grown into a £217 million a year business in the UK and a $2.2 billion a year busness in the US.

Three manufacturers * Kellogg, Weetabix and Cereal Partners (a joint venture between Nestlé and General Mills) * take in 65 per cent of all cereal bar sales. But it was Kellogg that launched the cereal bar as a food category in 1991 with the Nutri-Grain bar. Today Nutri-Grain is the market leader, with a 38 per cent share of the total cereal bar market.

If you are habitual 'deskfaster' you may have convinced yourself that a cereal bar is better than nothing. Think again. The box claims 'wholesome ingredients in every bar'. Yet this fruit filled cereal bar is only around eight percent fruit and 34 per cent cereal. The rest is fillers * mostly sugar, fat and bulking agents * making this product closer to a confectionarey than a breakfast item.

Recently the campaigning group the Food Commission tested 18 cereal bar products and found that all of them were high in fats, sugars, or both. For reference purposes the UK Food Standards Agency defines a high sugar product as containing 10g/100g of product and a high fat product as containing 20g/100g. The Nutri-Grain cereal bar contains 31g/100g of sugar, and 13.5g/100g of fat.

...more - http://rense.com/general77/behind.htm