You Won’t Believe Just How Much Sugar Is In Children’s Cereal!

A new analysis by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) shows that anyone eating an average serving of children’s cereal every day would consume more than 10 pounds of sugar a year (from the cereal alone). Yikes!

The EWG researched 1,556 cereals, including 181 of which are marketed directly to kids, and found that “that of all cereals, those that have cartoon characters on the box indicating they are marketed directly to children are the most heavily loaded with added sugar, making them a significant source of empty calories.”  And the craziest part of all? Check out these stats:

“A typical serving can contain as much sugar as three Chips Ahoy! or two Keebler Fudge Stripe cookies. EWG found that on average, 34 percent of the calories in children’s cereals come from sugar. For two-thirds of these cereals, a single serving contains more than a third of what experts recommend children consume in an entire day,” EWG reports. 

And there’s more. For at least 40 of the cereals listed, “a single serving exceeds 60 percent of the daily amount of sugar suggested by health agencies and organizations. Some contain as many as six different types of sweeteners.”

Cereals can indeed be healthy when done right, but the fact of the matter is that most of what’s available to children in an average supermarket is no better than handing a kid a handful of sugar-laden cookies. All of the kid’s cereals were guilty: “Of the 181 that EWG  examined, not one was free of added sugars.”

And the cereal marketers, beyond just adding bright colors and cartoons to cereal boxes, are doing even more to try to entice not just children but parents into buying these products: the EWG “also found evidence that promotional labeling on cereal boxes is designed to distract consumers from focusing on the unhealthy sugar content by making claims that the product provides important nutrients, such as ‘Excellent Source of Vitamin D’ or ‘Good Source of Fiber.’ The labels on seven of the 10 most heavily sugared children’s cereals in EWG’s 2011 cereal report currently feature a marketing claim promoting their nutrient content.”

People, please don’t feed your growing children cereal loaded with more sugar than a slice of cake for breakfast. There are so many better whole food options out there — hand your kid a banana and a piece of organic whole grain toast with some pure peanut butter, for example — that this really just isn’t necessary to keep loading kids up with this junk until something changes!

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