Apparently, cereal may not be the healthiest option to have for breakfast, experts have revealed. When it comes to breakfast, there are any number of options out there.
If you’re the sort of person who likes to spend the rest of the day sweltering in a greasy meat-sweat-laden semi-coma, then perhaps a full English is your preferred breakfast. Porridge is an option for those for whom appearance and taste are less of a concern and they just want something to get them through the morning. Those who fancy themselves a bohemian type might plump for a black coffee and a cigarette, presumably with a heady dose of morning ennui.
Of course, in the midst of all this, the breakfast cereal has long been an option for people who want something they can literally just pour in a bowl and shovel in their face. But cereal may not be the healthiest option according to dieticians.
Cereals continue to be a staple at the breakfast table, requiring no cooking beyond simply tipping it in a bowl with milk. Despite their being touted as healthy options, and even as part of some diet plans, cereals are not the healthy food they are often conceived as. There’s one ingredient in particular which means that cereals might be a bad option for a food to have first thing in the morning.
The problem with serving processed grains is that by themselves they would tend to taste like something akin to edible sawdust. Humans have historically come up with many ways of making grains palatable, from porridge to barley stews to bread and even beer as a dietary staple.
In the case of breakfast cereals, however, the answer to how they become palatable is a very modern vice – sugar, and lots of it. The result is that you have a big sugar rush of energy first thing in the morning, only to crash once the sugar rush wears off. Increased sugar intake is also linked to rising levels of obesity, as well as inconsistent energy levels.
Breakfast cereal is also a way to massively upsell something which is dirt cheap to produce. ‘Health washing’ it with descriptors like ‘low calorie’ or ‘high fibre’ is another way to make the product more appealing, along with those big colourful packets and amusing advertising campaigns.
Cereals also have a downright strange history at times, such as John Harvey Kellogg’s belief that cornflakes could be used to ‘cure’ masturbation, which might well be described as a load of old w*nk.