I'd rather have a bowl of Cocopops

[venta]

As ever, things are never quite how they should be.

Wandering the cereal aisle in Sainsbury's last night, I observed this:



I hurried gleefully down, eager to see what X-rated breakfast goods they had on offer. Tarantino Flakes, maybe, which shake into the bowl in a shower of dismembered body parts and foul language. At the very least I was hoping for glossy, full-frontal nudity on the box.



I feel let down by the world. Nothing more exciting than Special K, things with improbably spelled names suggesting improved health, and frighteningly worthy-looking muesli.

Still, at least I am reassured that my otherwise quite boring bran flakes came from a different section and are therefore suitable for juveniles.

Comments

[ulfilias.livejournal.com]

Actualy the amount of sugar being crammed into almost *EVERYTHING* these days is quite horrifying. A year or two back i went on a diet with the aim of cutting out sugar and its substitutes (sweetener, Honey, Dextrose, refined fructose etc) and its was *REALY* hard to shop in supermarkets....Tins of carots can have sugar, almost every salad dressing does (newmans do an italian one and it think that was it from Waitrose, Sainsburys, Tesco & Asda combined !).

You got cranky and spotty as hell for a week and a half and then really started to get some energy back as your blood sugar levels ballenced out and your body went onto using slower burning carbs properly.

Also cut caffine and the first coffee after a month or so was a right eye opener !

[mister-jack.livejournal.com]

(Pedant mode: honey, dextrose & fructose are sugars)

The only pre-processed foods I eat with any regularity are ham, breakfast cereals and bread. Everything else I cook from fresh.

But, yes, it is quite eye-opening what they pile sugar into. And the sheer number of things that are "sugar-free" that have just been pumped full of artificial sweeteners is quite horrifying - or, even worse, things that have sugar and sweeteners.

I tried to give up caffeine once, but gave up after a week.

[ulfilias.livejournal.com]

Don't think honey is a sugar per say, though i don't know what sugars it contains. Agreed that dextrose & fructose are members of the sugar grouping, and by sugar i did mean sucrose, or table sugar....Its kind of like Hoover in reference to a vaccum cleaner. The other one i'm not so sure of is maltodextrin which i guess is probably another refined carb as i see it a sugar substitue in foods.

Breakfast i've started to eat 2 Shredded Wheat and fruit juice, with a coffee - I did used to have toast, but tended towards the white breads or bagels and marge, though i've since heard that real butter is probably better for you despite the fat content.

[mister-jack.livejournal.com]

Butter isn't better for you; it's just become fashionable for being "more natural".

"Honey has a similar composition to granulated sugar (50% fructose and 44% glucose) and approximately the same relative sweetness (97% of the sweetness of sucrose)." - Wikipedia. There's a chunk of water and a small number of proteins and other compounds in there, but the sweetness comes from the sugar.

I keep thinking of switching to having a big cooked breakfast everyday (not a fry up, just cooked), in the whole "Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and supper like a pauper" theory of how one should eat, but I just can't quite be arsed with that kind of effort in the morning. Making coffee and sloshing milk on some cereal seems like a lot of work some days.

[pope-ant.livejournal.com]

Butter doesn't (unless it has been screwed around with) contain trans-fats.
A lot (all?) of margarine does.

An aquaintance (who works for a large food company) spent some time explaining this (with chemical formulas) to me recently.

[mister-jack.livejournal.com]

There are more trans fats in margarine (they occur naturally in vegetable oils), true, but there is still only a very small quantity (in the UK, the US has much higher level). Butter is usually higher in calorific value (mostly because it contains less water), and is much higher in saturated fats.

Higher levels of trans fats comes from partial hydrogynation. But that hasn't been used in most Margarines for the UK market since the mid 90s.

On the other hand, Butter just tastes better, and it's not like you use that much of either. It's only when you pile it into foods you are cooking that it becomes significant.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

I've done this a few times (well, I don't normally go as far as cutting out honey, though I do stick with as unrefined a type as possible), and I agree - you feel like hell for a while and then suddenly you have all this energy because your body's not totally reliant on frequent injections of cane sugar and high fructose corn syrup.

The most common sugar-substitutes (aspartame etc) give me terrible headaches so I can't go near them. I had high hopes for sucralose, which is derived from sugar, but everything I've tried that uses it so far has tasted really insipid.

[ulfilias.livejournal.com]

I've heard that Phenylalanine is quite bad for us and tends to interupt sleep....making some diet soft drinks quite bad at night !

[redcountess]

I tried doing that (giving up all added sugars as well as caffeine) as I have insulin resistance issues and it made food shopping a nightmare! I still have muesli with no added sugar though, the Alpen one is great but I switched to Tesco's as it's cheaper.