You Ask, I Answer/Perfect Pickings: Cereal

I love cereal and eat it almost every morning but I often feel like the ones I eat are probably too sugary or not very substantial.

Can you recommend a cereal or two that you consider healthy and nutritious?

-- Jenna Kozel
Washington, DC

Since the cereal market is so vast, I find it easier to recommend particular nutrient values and ingredients to look for in these products.

The first thing to take note of is the serving size.

Many brands of granola, for instance, use a quarter cup as their serving size, which is absolutely laughable.

A lot of cereals, meanwhile, list their serving size as a half cup.

If you have a measuring cup at home, please pour enough cereal into it to fill it to the brim. Yes, that tiny amount is what many companies use as a "serving." Unreal!

What I recommend you do as early as tomorrow morning is pour the amount of cereal you normally eat into a bowl.

Then, use a measuring cup to determine the exact amount of cereal in that bowl.

Keep that figure as a reference each time you read a cereal's nutrition label, as it will help you make smarter choices when shopping.

Let's say you eat 1.5 cups of cereal every morning.

If a cereal using half cup servings delivers 150 calories per serving, while another using 1 cup servings offers 200, you now know which is the better choice for you (in this case, the latter would add 300 calories to your day, while the first one would add up to 450.)

You also want to pay attention to fiber content.

I recommend anywhere from 4 to 7 grams of fiber per serving.

Again, since the average person eats more than one serving of cereal in one sitting, I don't think it's necessary to track down cereals offering fiber in the double digits.

Sugar values are also important. I consider up to 5 or 6 grams per serving to be reasonable (that equals a teaspoon and a half). The lower, the better.

Be careful with cereals containing raisins or other fruit, as the naturally-occurring fruit sugars "unfairly" drive up sugar numbers.

Twelve grams of sugar per serving from a cereal with marshmallows offers less nutrition than twelve grams of sugar from a cereal that contains raisins (which provide antioxidants and phytonutrients.)

If you enjoy raisins in your cereal, you -- and your wallet -- are better off buying raisins separately and adding them yourself.

Finally, take a look at the ingredient list. You want to this to be short and, ideally, be absent of refined grains (i.e.: enriched wheat flour.)

When in doubt, look for the Whole Grains Council Stamp.

You Ask, I Answer: Alpha Tocopherols

I have seen alpha tocopherols on a lot of ingredient lists, especially for packaged products.

What are they, and what purpose do they serve?

-- Andrea Chalen
(city withheld), SC

Alpha Tocopherols are a completely harmless form of Vitamin E.

They are mainly added to human and pet foods to delay spoilage and prevent alterations in taste (that's why "for freshness" is usually added after alpha tocopherols on an ingredient list.)

Much like ascorbic acid (the fancy name for vitamin C), alpha tocopherols are a food additive you shouldn't be concerned about.

The Numbers Speak for Themselves

Kraft's latest snack product is Mac 'n Cheese baked crackers available in three varieties: cheddar, mild cheedar, and white cheddar.

"Made with real cheddar cheese!" the boxes proudly display.

Let's get down to the facts.

150: the calories in a 1-ounce serving. This is the exact same caloric content of an ounce of Lay's potato chips or Cheetos.

300: the milligrams of sodium in a 1-ounce serving of the cheddar flavor. This is almost twice as much as the same amount of Lay's potato chips and 10 more milligrams than 1 ounce of Cheetos.

380: the milligrams of sodium contained in a 1-ounce serving of the white cheddar flavor.

35: the number of ingredients that make up the cheddar and white cheddar flavors.

Swap: 1 ounce of whole grain crackers and one stick of string cheese pretty much delivers the same calories with more substantial nutrition.

Say What?: You Say "Wholesome," I Say "Really?"

The Slim-Fast Foods Company describes itself as being “committed to the development of wholesome and balanced nutritional products to aid in weight management and improved health.”

An interesting description, to say the least, given the ingredient list for their 120-calorie chocolate peanut nougat snack bar:

Maltitol Syrup, Milk Chocolate Flavored Coating (Sugar, Partially Hydrogenated Palm Kernel And Palm Oil, Cocoa (Processed With Alkali), Sugar, Roasted Peanuts (Peanuts, Peanut Oil), Sweetened Condensed Skim Milk (Skim Milk, Sugar), Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil (Palm Kernel And Soybean), Whey Protein Isolate, Gum Arabic, Malted Milk (Extracts Of Wheat Flour And Malt Barley, Milk, Salt, Sodium Bicarbonate), Nonfat Milk, Salt, Egg Whites, Artificial Flavor, Caramel Color, Soy Lecithin, Maltodextrin, Tbhq And Citric Acid, Vitamins And Minerals (Calcium Phosphate, Calcium Carbonate, Ferric Orthophosphate, Vitamin E Acetate, Ascorbic Acid, Vitamin E Acetate, Niacinamide, Calcium Pantothenate, Vitamin A Palmitate, Pyridoxine Hydrocholoride, Riboflavin, Thiamin Mononitrate, Folic Acid, Biotin, Cholecalciferol (Vitamin D3), Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12).

How a product with partially hydrogenated oils and maltitol syrup (the syrup of a sugar alcohol!) as its first ingredient can be described as 'wholesome' beats me.

You might as well eat a small chocolate bar and pop a multivitamin.

Why not have a handful (160 calories’ worth) of peanuts instead?

It's just as convenient and portable a snack as one of these bars, and doesn't contribute added sugars or partially hydrogenated oils (trans fats) to your day.

Added bonus if you choose peanuts? Heart-healthy monounsaturated fats!

By the way, the "40% less sugar" banner on the box of these bars is the result of replacing half the sugar with maltitol (the sugar alcohol most likely to cause bloating, gas, and diarrhea. Yum!)

Craving chocolate but looking to control calories? Have a 100-calorie chocolate bar, sans sugar alcohols. Savor it, enjoy it, and go about your day.

Survey Results: Nutrition Labels, Part Deux

The latest Small Bites survey asked readers what values they paid most attention to when reading food labels.

The most important figure on a label relates to calories per serving -- at least that's how seventy-five percent of respondents voted.

The ingredients list (32%), fiber content (30%), and serving size (29%) also received a good deal of votes.

While saturated fat was considered important by 23% of readers, total fat content received a significant 40% of votes.

I'm not too sure why this is the case.

Fat content in and of itself doesn't tell us much about the food that we can't already gauge by taking a look at calories per serving (since fat contributes 9 calories per gram, foods with higher fat contents provide more calories than lower-fat ones).

If you only look at total fat values, wonderfully healthy foods like guacamole or walnuts appear no different than brownies or ice cream sandwiches.

When it comes to fat content, saturated fat (and trans fat, although once food companies were mandated to display trans fat figures on their products they miraculously found new trans-fat-free formulas for their products) is the value to keep your eye on.

Remember, high intakes of saturated fat are linked to higher risks of heart disease and a decrease in HDL (or "good") cholesterol.

Guacamole, though, is mostly composed of monounsaturated fats (the kind that help lower LDL -- or "bad" -- cholesterol).

This is why fat content -- without a more specific breakdown -- isn't an appropriate factor to base food purchases on (unless, as previously mentioned, you are trying to gauge calories).

I was surprised to see that vitamin and mineral values are largely considered irrelevant. Only 5 percent of respondents consider vitamin content to be important, and a measly 4 percent feel that way about mineral figures.

A huge thank you to those of you who took a minute to participate!

Please leave comments and thoughts on the results in the "comments" section.