Why is shredded wheat healthy

The fiber content in a serving of Post shredded wheat is another advantage of this cereal. A shredded wheat bowl contains 6. That translates to about 15 to 25 percent of the 25 to 38 grams of fiber, respectively, that women and men should aim to consume each day. A cup of frosted shredded wheat contains 5 grams of fiber per cup. Getting plenty of fiber each day is a healthy way to help protect yourself against certain health conditions, such as heart disease and Type 2 diabetes, as well as reduce your risk of constipation.

Further, an article published in the journal "JAMA Internal Medicine" in reported that the fiber in cereal is the best type of fiber for cutting your risk of certain health conditions, although part of the benefit might come from the other nutrients in cereal. One cup of plain Post shredded wheat cereal contains 1. Iron helps you produce red blood cells, which are responsible for carrying oxygen throughout your body. The same cup of plain shredded wheat cereal also delivers 1. This advice is based on a woman's daily recommended calorie intake of 2,kcal.

You might get about kcal from a 40g serving of cereal. You could add a medium sliced banana and ml of semi-skimmed milk, which altogether would provide about kcals.

If you want to get your child off sugary cereals, you can try mixing sugary cereals with similar looking lower-sugar ones. You could then gradually increase the amount of lower-sugar cereal over time to get your child used to them. Or you could let your child pick from a selection of 3 healthier cereals. People are increasingly not eating breakfast cereals and will instead pick an "on-the-go" option, such as a breakfast muffin and a latte.

If you're short on time in the morning, you could try setting the table the night before. You could also grab a pot of porridge on your way to work or have your cereal when you get in. Let yourself be tempted by our simple breakfasts designed to whet the appetite of even the most habitual breakfast skipper. His Grape Nuts were miraculously not only 'brain food' but could also cure consumption and malaria, and were even, despite their enamel-cracking hardness, said to be an antidote to loose teeth.

By Battle Creek had turned into a cereal Klondike. At one point there were over cereal factories operating in the town to satisfy the new craze, many making fabulously exaggerated claims about the health benefits of their products. This symbiotic relationship between sales, health claims and the promotion of packaged breakfast cereals has continued ever since.

Nor was it a coincidence that this particular Klondike sprang up in the American Mid-West, whose vast tracts of virgin land had been recently opened up by settlers and turned over to the agricultural production that powered US development. The Kelloggs had tried unsuccessfully to protect their flaking process with patents. When WK saw how much others were making from the new foods, he launched his own advertizing campaign, giving away free samples and putting ads in newspapers.

The road to nutritional corruption opened up early. The Kellogg brothers argued over whether to make the cereals more palatable by adding sugar — the addition was anathema to John who saw sugar as an adulterant and a scourge, but William reckoned it was needed to stop the products tasting like 'horse-food'. WK won. Global expansion followed quickly. Britain saw its first cornflakes in when the company set up offices in London and used unemployed men and boy scouts to act as a sales force for the imported cereal which was shipped in from Canada.

The technology used to make industrial quantities of breakfast cereal today is essentially the same as that developed from the kitchen experiments of those fundamentalist healers, although new ways have been found to add the sugar, salt and flavourings.

Cornflakes are generally made by breaking corn kernels into smaller grits which are then steam cooked in batches of up to a tonne under pressure of about 20lbs per square inch. The nutritious germ with its essential fats is first removed because, as the Kellogg brothers discovered all that time ago, it goes rancid over time and gets in the way of long shelf life. Flavourings, vitamins to replace those lost in processing and sugar may be added at this stage. It then takes four hours and vast amounts of energy to drive the steam out of the cooked grits before they can be rolled by giant rollers into flakes.

Steamed wheat biscuits such as shredded wheats are made with whole wheat grains which are pressure cooked with water. They are then passed between rollers which squeeze them into strands and build them up into layers. Glucose has a GI of and is what these indexes measure other foods against.

They indicate how fast different foods are converted to glucose and absorbed into the bloodstream. Worries about the nutritional value of such highly processed grains surfaced early.

Post's company was one of the first to begin the heavy duty pre-sweetening of cereals with sugar coating in the late s. The sales were enviable. The Kellogg company however held back, according to interviews with former employees in Cerealizing America, the highly entertaining account of cereal history by Scott Bruce and Bill Crawford.

The charitable Kellogg Foundation which had been set up by then to promote children's health and education was a major shareholder and was concerned that flogging sugar-coatings to the young might not be compatible with its purpose.

Many of the health benefits claimed for breakfast cereals depended on fortification rather than micronutrients from the raw ingredients, most of which were either destroyed by the process or stripped away before it. The earliest fortification was with vitamin D, the so-called sunshine vitamin, and acted as a marketing tool.

Today a new wave of fortification is coming, and once again its principal purpose is marketing. Inulin, a form of fibre from plants, known to the food industry until recently as a cheap bulking agent thanks to its ability to retain water and mimic the mouthfeel of fats, is now added as a 'prebiotic'. They have coined this word for it because it resists digestion in the upper gastrointestinal tract and reaches the large intestine almost intact where it is fermented by bacteria, encouraging the production of friendly microflora, which the industry markets too, as probiotics.

The inulin, in other words, does what the fibre naturally occurring in whole grains would do if it hadn't been stripped out by over processing. Companies are also looking at adding omega-3 fatty acids such as DHA. Where my cat food goes, breakfast cereals follow. There are technical difficulties with this. Since the DHA tends to come from fish, it makes things taste fishy, and its flavour has to be masked with other additives.

That processed cereals had become little more than sugary junk with milk and vitamin pills added, was an accusation made as long ago as the s.

A US congressional hearing in was told by an adviser to President Nixon on nutrition, Robert Choate, that the majority of breakfast cereals 'fatten but do little to prevent malnutrition'. Choate was outraged at the aggressive targeting of children in breakfast cereal advertizing. He analysed sixty well-known cereal brands for nutritional quality and concluded that two thirds of them offered 'empty calories, a term thus far applied to alcohol and sugar'.

Rats fed a diet of ground-up cereal boxes with sugar, milk and raisins were healthier than rats fed the cereals themselves, he testified to senators. Battle Creek today is a small backwater in Michigan three hours drive from Chicago. There is not much sign now of the cereal gold rush that changed the British palate, and the flake factories working day and night have mostly gone. But the legacy lives on. Built in the shape of an old American grain store, it is a museum testament to the power of marketing that so maddened Choate.

Walking through the collection I too was struck by how much our breakfast today is the child of advertizing. Trading on our insecurity about health, manipulating our emotions and selling to us through health professionals has always been part of the great puff. The antique cardboard boxes on show underline how from the first breakfast cereals sold not just a meal but a way of life: Power, Vim, Vigor, Korn Kinks and Climax cereal are among the early brand names. Add berries and fruit for extra sweetness instead.

This one might be a surprise because it's one of the sweeter cereals. But even though it's sweet, the first two ingredients are corn and whole grain wheat. The USDA reports that a one cup 42g serving contains:. This one does have a little more sugar than the others, so it's not a good idea to add any more sugar to a bowl. But it does have a decent amount of fiber and protein while also not being too high in calories or sodium, so it isn't too bad.

Wheaties isn't really a sweet cereal, but it does have sugar added it's actually the second ingredient on the list. Still, Wheaties can be a solid choice for a healthy breakfast since the first ingredient is whole grain wheat. According to the USDA, a one cup 36g serving contains:. Wheaties is good when it's topped with fruit or berries, along with your favorite type of milk.

Try some whole grain toast and nut butter, or an egg, on the side. Corn Chex is another rather plain cereal, but it's low in calories and sugar, so it makes the top seven. How does it compare to all of the other breakfast cereals already listed? The following nutrition information is provided by the USDA for a one cup 31g serving:. Since Corn Chex is low in sugar, you could add a little bit of regular sugar. But since it's on the low side as far as fiber content, serving it with a big helping of fresh fruit can help increase your fiber intake.

These next few options are still nutritious choices. They just didn't quite make the list of the healthiest breakfast cereals. First two ingredients : Whole grain wheat and corn meal.

This cereal has a lot of sugar and sodium. But it also offers fiber and protein. Nutrition information per cup 40g :. First two ingredients : Whole grain wheat and cornmeal. This is another cereal with a lot of sugar but a decent amount of protein and fiber. Nutrition information per cup 55g :. First two ingredients : Whole grain wheat and raisins.

Raisin Bran is high in sugar, but much of that is probably naturally occurring in the raisins. It also has plenty of fiber and a good amount of protein. Nutrition information per cup 61g :. First two ingredients : Rice and wheat gluten. Special K has plenty of protein and is low in calories , but it does lack fiber. Nutrition information per cup 31g :. First two ingredients : Whole grain oats and sugar.

On the positive side, this breakfast cereal isn't too high in sodium and has plenty of fiber and protein.

One downside is that it has a lot of sugar and is significantly higher in fat than others on this list. Nutrition information per cup 73g :. First two ingredients : Whole grain wheat flour and malted barley flour.