Cheerios low carb?
Please.
Cheerios are a childhood treat, but not for the right reasons or the best reasons.
The NHS (national health service) in the UK makes this apparent:
There are 122,780 children and young adults under the age of 40 years with type 2 diabetes; of whom 1,560 (around 1.3 per cent) are under the age of 19 years.
How many of those 122,780 diabetic children eat Cheerios and are told they’re healthy?
The USA is no better, as shown by the CDC:
283,000 children and adolescents younger than age 20 years—or 35 per 10,000 US youths—had diagnosed diabetes.
And Statista’s data says THIS about the number of people eating cereal in the UK:
Every week, the average UK household consumes 128 grams of breakfast cereals. During the past decade, consumption had overall been slowly declining till the current reversal. Breakfast cereals are still eaten once or more times a day by close to 14 million Brits.
Make no mistake. Cheerios and “healthy” cereals cause this. One of which some sites dare claim is low carb or that they can be part of a low carb lifestyle.
They can’t.
Here’s why.
1. Honey nut Cheerios
According to WALMART (or anyone who sells Honey Nut Cheerios), 1 cup has 30g of carbs and 12g of sugar.
One cup is 37g.
You might reason that 30g of carbs is lower than the limit of 50, and conclude that this is indeed a lower carbohydrate cereal.
The reality? Nobody eats 1 cup of cereal. Can you imagine giving kids only one cup of Honey nut cheerios and them being satisfied with that?
Those same kids become adults, just like you did, and you still don’t eat only 1 cup of honey nut Cheerios for breakfast IF you were to eat it.
In reality, you have a big bowl full of honey-nut Cheerios. We’re talking at least 70g-100g per serving.
This makes the real carb count in the range of 60g or 24g for sugar, if not higher.
The lie of it helping “lower cholesterol” is not only mocking you since it has refined sugars, it assumes “low fat” is heart healthy.
It’s an insult.
2. Chocolate cheerios
When looking at chocolate Cheerios, which sounds absolutely delicious, the same rule applies.
28g of carbs and 10g of sugar per 36g cup of Chocolate Cheerios.
Hearing this a person thinks “Oh wow, look at this! This is one of the healthiest Cheerios I’ve ever seen” – not knowing besides the synthetics and bullshit, it’s really double or triple that number of carbs or sugar.
Because that’s a true to life portion size an average person will eat. The carefully chosen portion size listed on the back of the box is deliberate and straight-up lies that people fall for thanks to bias.
3. Standard cheerios
Even if we look at the standard Cheerios, which is 20.7g of carbs and 5.3g of sugar, which sounds amazing, the reality is different.
This is taken from Ocado in the UK, and those amounts are per 30g bowl which is madness.
A realistic bowl is at least double or triple, meaning 20.7g of carbs becomes over 41g or 62g, with the sugar in the 10g-15g range.
Carbs turn to sugar, and this is a refined product. Do the math and you see the low-carb fraud that Cheerios actually is despite some saying it can be part of a low-carb diet (Livestrong is a silly example).
4. Portion sizes
https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/mqmsx7/i_present_to_you_the_greatest_lie_told_to_this/?rdt=51331
This is what a 30g bowl of cereal looks like. This is the portion size they advocate for when suggesting how much to eat, or that the cereal in question (cheerios) is “Low carb” and healthy.
Look at that bowl. I respect anyone who can eat this much cereal and be satisfied without adding more to the bowl afterwards and craving much more.
But that’s not realistic for the average person because of blood sugar issues, habits formed over the years, sugar-induced cravings from eating these types of foods, chemicals, and so on.
Even if you eat a tiny 30g bowl of cereal you’re still not getting any real nutrition (the nutrition comes from the milk, not the cereal) since the cereal is fortified, synthetic, and is purely a man-made product.
It’s devoid of anything your body can truly be satisfied with.
5. Realistic portion sizes
https://www.choosetolivebetter.com/content/eating-and-drinking-well
This is what a bowl of Cheerios cereal would look like if they were being honest with their marketing and labelling.
The one on the left is what you’re “told” to have, but the one on the right is the realistic portion size you WILL have.
If not another 30g on top.
This is why Cheerios and any sugary cereal can never be part of a true low-carbohydrate or ketogenic lifestyle.
The more marketing drivel a box of cereal has (like Cheerios), the more concerned you have to be. And that means doing your due diligence.
6. Ingredients
These are the ingredients for the Honey Nut Cheerios flavour.
- Sugar.
- Corn Starch.
- Honey.
- Brown Sugar.
- Syrup.
Besides obvious stuff to avoid like Canola oil, I’ll focus on these SUGARS since that’s what’s relevant.
Sugar and brown sugar are obvious. But notice how high on the list they are compared to let’s say, the fortified vitamins at the bottom.
You also have honey, syrup, and corn starch – all ingredients that contribute to blood sugar spikes, insulin problems, and your body absorbing sugar at breakneck speeds.
This is not good for someone trying to pursue a low carbohydrate lifestyle, or better yet, ketogenic to solve various health problems.
It’s just another reason why Cheerios will NEVER be low carb no matter what you do.
And this is true even for standard multigrain Cheerios.
They STILL have sugar, Invert sugar syrup, caramelised sugar syrup, and more that makes it no good for the low carbohydrate lifestyle.
So it’s a foolish argument sites (or writers) like Livestrong should be more honest about.
7. The desire for more
I already elaborated on this but it needs repeating. No one only has a small 30g bowl of cereal or Cheerios. It tastes too good to pass up.
Sugar is designed to make you crave more of the food you’re eating. It’s even true when you add sugar to your tea, that makes you want to either add more to your tea or make more tea to have more added sugar.
Why eat food that makes your life, your goals, your wants, and your needs more problematic, difficult, harder to ignore, and in the case of weight loss or health, harder to achieve?
8. Refined sugars and chemicals in Cheerios
Taken straight from Healthline.com’s website:
Glyphosate is the main chemical of concern with Cheerios. If you want to cut down the risk of ingesting glyphosate or other dangerous herbicides, such as paraquat, look for products labeled organic and made with ingredients that weren’t exposed to certain herbicides and pesticides including glyphosate.
The website blogilates makes a counter-argument:
an average-sized person would need to eat THOUSANDS of servings of Cheerios every single day to ingest a comparable amount of glyphosate to those who come in direct contact with it and therefore may have an increased risk for cancer.
As they say, the dose makes the poison.
Even if the latter is true, in the context of eating low carb, going ketogenic, and eating whole foods, why would you eat a food that has chemicals in it?
What is the purpose of it? What do you accomplish? You won’t accomplish a ketogenic lifestyle and the health benefits that come with it.
That’s number 1.
And number 2, you won’t achieve more health than you already have by eating Cheerios regardless of whether it increases your RISK or not to Glyphosphate.
Then there’s the issue of the REFINED sugars in Cheerios.
I like this point from the website HomegymStrength:
simple carbs will be always digested faster than complex carbs. If you’re someone who needs to maintain their calorie intake at a certain threshold then simple carbs will only make it more difficult for you. Sure, you can lose a significant amount of weight by eating candy, however, you’ll be deficient in essential micronutrients.
Ignoring the calorie part, the message is spot on in the context of this article.
It’s the reason Cheerios aren’t low-carb by design. The carb count is too high, AND you absorb the sugars too quickly.
It’s a recipe for disaster as the overused saying goes.
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In the end, few Cereals are truly appropriate for a low-carbohydrate lifestyle. And they’re devoid of any real nutrition.
Stick to real whole foods, and the appropriate alternatives and you’ll be fine.
Cheerios are a bad choice and will never be a keto-friendly food, and playing mental gymnastics won’t change that.
Next:
The Ultimate Ocado Keto Shopping List