Worried about the health effects of the sugar in your breakfast cereal?

Additionally, many of the breakfast items from the film are still familiar to the general public. As a kid, I also enjoyed some of the sugary cereals featured in “Unfrosted” and I also ate Pop-Tarts.

In fact, I still have a box or two of this cereal at home, even though I’m an adult and working as an assistant professor of nutrition and dietetics.

There are reasons why these foods are so popular and why the cereal aisle at your grocery store has barely changed in decades. Their sweet taste, simple ingredients, and powerful marketing featuring memorable cartoon mascots still resonate with us, even after we’re kids. It’s no wonder that the cereal industry is projected to be worth $22.5 billion in revenue in 2024 in the United States alone, and global revenue is expected to grow from $81.6 billion in 2024 to $139 billion in 2033.

Excessive sugar consumption increases the risk of breast and colon cancer.

The Sweet Lure of Sugary Cereals

In a landmark 2006 study, researchers gave rats a choice between saccharin-sweetened water or cocaine. Ninety-four percent of the rats preferred saccharin. And that figure included a group of rats addicted to cocaine: 100 percent of them chose saccharin.

In theory, sweetness is not considered an addiction. In fact, humans have an innate and universal preference for sweet tastes, especially children, who tend to prefer sweeter foods than adults.

But that’s not all that makes them so appealing. Since the days of “Unfrosted,” marketing campaigns for breakfast products have been hugely successful.

Most Americans are familiar with the Snap, Crackle and Pop kids, Tony the Tiger, Lucky Charms the elf, Trix the rabbit, Toucan Sam from Froot Loops and dozens of others.

More recently, millions watched the first edible sports mascot – a giant Pop-Tart – being devoured by the winners of the Pop Tarts Bowl, held in December 2023.

The commercial success of these foods, however, is not necessarily linked to their nutritional quality.

Added sugar is the bad guy

Although the sugar content of sweetened breakfast cereals decreased by 45.9% by weight in 1985, many cereals today still contain a lot of sugar, with over 30% of their weight coming from sugar.

Next time you’re in the cereal aisle, take a few minutes to look at the sugar content of your favorite brands, especially the ones you loved as a kid. Most of these cereals have between 10 and 14 grams of “added sugar” per serving, and some have more. Some types of iced Pop-Tarts have up to 30 grams of added sugar per serving, which is about two Pop-Tarts.

Added sugars are empty calories; they are added to the product during the manufacturing process to make it taste better. This is in contrast to naturally occurring sugars, such as those in fruits or other whole foods, that provide nutrients. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans, published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, state that added sugar intake should not exceed 10% of your total calories. The World Health Organization recommends even less added sugar—just 5% of calories.

Let’s say you eat 2,000 calories a day. Ten percent of that total is 200 calories. One gram of sugar provides 4 calories. According to U.S. guidelines, that means you should eat no more than 50 grams of added sugar a day. Eat a serving of cereal with 14 grams of sugar, and you’ll have nearly reached 30 percent of your daily limit. Or follow the World Health Organization’s recommendations: 5 percent of a 2,000-calorie diet is 25 grams a day, and you’ll have reached more than half your daily limit.

That said, the less added sugar you eat, the better. Zero is even better.

There is a big difference between fruit sugar and table sugar.

The science of sugar

The glycemic index indicates how much a particular food affects blood sugar. Foods with a high glycemic index raise blood sugar more than foods with a low glycemic index.

A food with a glycemic index of less than 55 is low; a food with a high glycemic index of more than 70. Pure glucose, a simple sugar, has a maximum glycemic index value of 100.

Although many cereals contain high amounts of added sugar, some also contain a good amount of fiber, which lowers blood sugar. But even with this fiber content, most sugary cereals have a value of 70 or higher.

Other breakfast foods, like plain Greek yogurt and bananas, have values ​​around 35 and 55 respectively, making them low on the glycemic index.

Health effects

Foods high in simple carbohydrates and high on the glycemic index, such as sugary cereals, lead to higher blood lipid levels, increased hunger, and increased insulin release. These are all factors that contribute to the development of heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

This happens because high blood sugar increases blood pressure. It also increases the formation of advanced glycation end products, which are molecules formed from sugars that can stiffen blood vessels and increase inflammation.

If added sugar consumption exceeds 13% of total calories (on a 2,000-calorie diet, that’s 260 calories, or 65 grams of added sugar per day), it increases your risk of dying from cardiovascular disease by 39%. And that’s just one bowl of sugary cereal on top of the 50 grams the USDA considers the acceptable limit.

Conversely, low glycemic index diets are associated with improved markers of blood sugar, blood lipids, and reduced body weight.

Reduce sugar consumption

A good place to start when trying to reduce your sugar intake is to read the Nutrition Facts label on the food package, which indicates the added sugar content.

Added sugars may also be present in the ingredient list, often in the form of glucose, fructose, maltose or sucrose. They may also appear in the form of other food ingredients, such as molasses, honey, jam, concentrated juice or syrup. They may also be listed simply as sugar.

It is also essential to recognize the differences between portion sizes and actual serving sizes. A serving size is what is described on the Nutrition Facts label, while a serving size is how much you actually serve yourself.

When it comes to breakfast cereal, people consistently serve themselves more than the recommended serving size, which means you’re consuming more sugar than you think. People who freely poured cereal from a box into a bowl overestimated the serving size of nine out of ten types of cereal, with the sole exception of one type of cereal that’s already portioned. I’m guilty of this because at home, I fill my bowls to the top.

The amount served in excess ranged from an extra sixth of a serving to more than a full serving, resulting in 0.5 to 7 grams of extra sugar.

One solution to this is to choose smaller bowls and spoons. This is a clever trick, and research shows that it actually works. Another solution is to measure the portion size using a measuring cup.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is currently studying ways to regulate ultra-processed foods. These are typically foods that contain many ingredients that are formulated using industrial techniques. Ultra-processed foods include sugary foods, such as many breakfast cereals.

The FDA may require mandatory reductions in added sugar content, similar to the current voluntary reductions advocated by the National Salt and Sugar Reduction Initiative, which aims to reduce the average percentage of sugar in cereals by just over 5% by 2026.

But those cuts may be a long time coming. It took the FDA more than three years to ban partially hydrogenated oils from food manufacturing after they were no longer recognized as safe. For now, at least, your cereal aisle will continue to look like it did in “Unfrosted.”

Nathaniel Johnson, assistant professor of nutrition and dietetics, University of North Dakota

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.