General Mills Reduces Sugar in Children's Cereals

The Giveaway is CLOSED!  Congrats to Shelly and Grace - please check your email and respond! Thanks for participating.

We've all heard many times that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, especially for young children, but mornings trying to get the family organized and together and out the door on time can be a nightmare, and often that breakfast happens on the run.  A quick pass through the fast food drive-through can easily cost nearly 600 calories for a breakfast sandwich alone or a pancake and sausage breakfast, and that's not counting a drink.  And that 20-ounce non-fat caramel cappuccino you thought would be a good option to pull you through to that mid-morning yogurt, just cost you about the same amount of calories as a glazed doughnut - yikes!

Thank goodness in this hurry up world there are packaged cereals to help us get both our children, and often us fed and out of the door quickly.  The problem? Cereals have been notoriously high in sugar.  Recently, General Mills announced a commitment to further reduce sugar in cereals advertised to kids under 12 to single digit grams of sugar per serving. The company has already been reducing sugar in cereals while increasing key nutrients, such as calcium and vitamin D, and providing whole grain.

Did you know that ready-to-eat cereal eaters also tend to consume less fat, less cholesterol and more fiber than non-cereal eaters? Cereals also deliver important vitamins, minerals and other essential nutrients, making cereal a top source of key nutrients in children´s diets.

Other cereal benefits:

✓ Ready-to-eat cereals, including presweetened cereals, account for only 5% of sugar in children´s diets.

✓ Ready-to-eat cereal is the No. 1 source of whole grains in a child´s diet today.

✓ More frequent cereal eaters tend to have healthier body weights and lower Body Mass Index measures.

Studies also demonstrate the benefits of eating breakfast. A 1998 study showed that children who eat breakfast tend to perform better at school. Compared to children who skip breakfast, children who eat breakfast score higher on tests, are less likely to miss class or be tardy, have fewer reported discipline problems, and make fewer trips to the office.

For more information about kids and cereals, please visit Cereal Health and Wellness.

Giveaway is CLOSED!  Good luck!!

I have 2 VIP coupons available to giveaway to 2 lucky readers. Each coupon is good for any one FREE General Mills cereal, up to $6.00 in value! (does not apply to multipacks)

Your comment below is your entry, but you must leave a contact email in your comment to qualify! Simple. Easy. Giveaway closes at noon on Sunday, January 10, 2009 and 2 winners will be chosen at random from the list of comments.


Open to Everybody:


Don't want to wait? Right now if you visit here you will find a $1 off coupon for one of four General Mills cereals so that you can help your family come together at the breakfast table every morning and feel better knowing that the cereal you are eating is a good option.

Disclosure:  General Mills through MyBlogSpark provided me with this information as well as free cereal coupons to evaluate their cereals hoping that I might share my opinions about the importance of breakfast with my readers.

Use Greek Yogurt to Lower Fat

The probiotics found in yogurt help boost immunity making it a great winter food, but did you know that yogurt is a great add in to your diet when trying to reduce fat and calories? Of course, like it's partner, regular low fat yogurt, it's good on all on it's own as a snack or even a meal replacement because yogurt can help to keep you away from that snack machine at work when the mid-afternoon hungries roll around. Some varieties on the market now even provide digestive helpers that help with regularity and some provide extra boosts of much needed fiber. But did you know that yogurt has a great place in cooking and even baking?  Low fat or fat free strained yogurt, known as Greek yogurt, is thick and creamy, despite the lack of fat, making it perfect to use in recipes calling for fats.

✓ Low fat Greek yogurt can also often be used where you would normally use sour cream or mayonnaise in a creamy dishes, dips, with pastas, in casseroles, salad dressings, and even as a topping with Mexican dishes or on a baked potato.

✓ Low fat regular or Greek yogurt can often reduce or replace butter, oil, and shortening when baking.

✓ Low fat Greek yogurt can be used as a substitute in many desserts to provide that same rich creaminess fats provide.

✓ Unlike regular yogurt, low fat Greek yogurt doesn't separate, so it holds up to heat making it perfect for making stovetop sauces and adding creaminess to soups, replacing whole milk, heavy cream or half and half in a recipe.

✓ Low fat yogurt or Greek yogurt can be used as a binder instead of eggs to reduce fat when breading foods, like with oven fried fish or chicken.

✓ Low fat Greek yogurt can often be a great stand-in for many recipes that use cream cheese as an ingredient.

Basic Guidelines to Substitute Yogurt to Reduce Fat

☞ Substitute part of the water or milk called for in a recipe by replacing 1/4 of the amount called for with yogurt.

☞ Substitute mayonnaise or sour cream with yogurt cup for cup. If a recipe calls for 1 cup of mayonnaise or sour cream, use 1 cup of yogurt.

☞ Substitute yogurt when a recipe calls for oil, by replacing half of the oil with 3/4s the amount of yogurt. Instead of 1 cup of oil, using 1/2 cup of oil and 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons of yogurt.

☞ Substitute half the butter in a recipe with one-half the amount of yogurt. If a recipe calls for 1 cup butter, use 1/4 cup of yogurt with 1/2 cup butter.

Experiment! Next time you need to use butter, cream, milk, oil, sour cream, mayonnaise, half and half, whole milk, or cream cheese, consider whether it could be replaced with Greek yogurt and save yourself some calories and fat! So good and so healthy - because it's natural, it's loaded with protein from being concentrated and it has lots of calcium.

The one problem with Greek yogurt however is it's cost. Did you know that you can make your own Greek yogurt at home for a mere fraction of the cost? It's true - I do it all the time! Click right here to find out how.

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