As a nutrition professional, I receive many promotional items in the mail wanting me to support their products.  My most recent being a publication from a prominent cereal company with 13 pages on the Benefits of Cereal. On the first page, it states “cereal is one of the healthiest breakfast choices you can make.  Ready-to-eat cereal has fewer calories than almost any other common breakfast option.”

To this I say, ”Really?  There can be 13 pages of why cereal is the best thing?”  I beg to differ.  This company heavily advertises its cereal as the one to choose if trying to lower your cholesterol and has recently taken some heat for their advertising related to this.  As some of you know, most of my last 10 years has been dedicated to researching and fighting heart disease with nutrition.  Through this time, I have been working against these excellent marketing people, trying to tell the public that their cereal is not the best choice to lower their risk of heart disease.  And let me tell you that’s a challenge.  After requesting further research and documentation on their studies,  3 cups of their cereal daily (wow that’s a lot) has the potential to lower cholesterol slightly for a few people.  However what about those people who have the tendency to have more belly fat, higher triglycerides and are at risk for, or already have diabetes?  Definitely not the best choice for them.  And we know that heart disease isn’t just about cholesterol, we need to remember inflammation plays a part also.  Most cereals do nothing to lower inflammation and may actually be promoting it.

As for me and my family, we are not eating cereal for breakfast.   Give me a couple eggs, some natural peanut butter or a protein shake anyday.  They can keep their lil’ O’s – no 13 pages is going to convince me otherwise.

Typical cooler Sunday morning.  I wake up wanting a nice steaming cup of cappuccino.  Not a real cappuccino, but the “add the powder to hot water” type that you can get from a gas station.  And lucky me, I found a  mix in the grocery store that was SO good and I could have it at home to enjoy a cup whenever I wanted.  Which soon became a daily occurrence.

Enter in client who was also a lover of this cheap cappuccino.  Our mission - lowering her cholesterol.  After reviewing her excellent diet history, her 4 “from the powder” cappucino a day habit stuck out like a sore thumb.  She agreed to wean off these to see what difference it would make.   After 3 months of no capp, her cholesterol was down 40 points!!!!  We were thrilled. 

So was this enough for me to stop my once daily habit?  Not quite, but thought I would try watering it down some and now – no more in the house!  I’ve switched to green tea and have at least one daily.  Packing in those cancer and heart disease fighting anti-oxidants instead of the refined sugars and shelf stable fats.

But I must tell you it still calls my name…and I am trying not to listen.

Processed foods.  The unfortunate side to most of our days that can mess up our attempts at good health and nutrition.  As we try to ”keep up” with our day to day routines, it seems that choosing processed foods becomes our regular choice.  This will continue to threaten our health until we really get a grip on it.  Remember, the choice is yours.  Adding weight, increased cancer risk, more inflammation, increased heart disease risk, more fatigue and the list of problems goes on and on.  Processed foods rob us of essential vitamins and minerals, that protect us from illness.  I challenge you to take a look in your pantry, fridge, desk drawer, kid’s lunchbox, snack drawer and make some decisions about how you can un-process your diet.