Are most breakfast cereals dangerous junk food or healthy nutrition?
I read an article a while back about how people who eat breakfast cereals on a regular basis live longer. I don’t have the article on hand, and I don’t know how scientific it was, but they claimed that fortified cereals were the key, that the benefit from the extra vitamins and minerals outweighed the negative effects of the extra salt, fat and sugar. Obviously these people would get the same benefit from skipping the cereal and taking a good multivitamin, but many don’t do that. Cereals could be a contributing factor to pediatric obesity in the US and Europe, but there are other things that contribute much more. Such as higher consumption of fast food and junk food in general. And more time spent sitting in front of the TV, computer or playing video games, meaning less physical activity.
There are a lot of “junk food” cereals out there that target kids by putting cute cartoons on the box. If you look at the cereal aisle in your grocery store you will notice that the cereal with lots of sugar in them are on the middle and bottom shelves where kids see them. The companies of these cereals actually pay the stores the most money to have there products placed on these shelves since they are seen the most. The very top shelf in the cereal aisle has most of the healthy cereals.
