What's for breakfast?

At this sedentary time of year, it’s tempting to consolidate your unhealthy winter lack of exercise with a comparable increase in eating high-fat,  low-fiber foods. Well, it’s tempting to me, at least.  The less time I spend swimming, the more time I spend waiting in line at McDonald’s for a breakfast burrito and hash browns. Or the more time I spend at Country Bistro in Salisbury, trying to decide between a cupcake for breakfast or a chocolate croissant.

For many Americans, though, breakfast often comes with a sugar coating on top (doughnuts, pastries, Froot Loops) or an extra portion of fat (bagel with cream cheese, bacon-and-egg sandwich). Sometimes these unhealthy choices are made from force of habit. Other times, these foods are the easiest to snag quickly on the way to work.

Many gas stations these days, and many fast-food eateries, also sell cereal. And though I plead guilty to holding out and waiting until Corn Pops are among the offerings, it is possible to get healthy high-grain, low-sugar cereals in single-serving sizes.

In general, eating breakfast cereal is good for you. The fiber, especially in brands that use whole grains, helps your body fight cancer and heart disease. It also helps keep you, ahem, regular. Low-sugar high-fiber cereals with nuts in them can be especially helpful to people with diabetes, because high fiber foods are digested slowly, and that helps control blood glucose levels.

A study done in 2002 at the University of California at Davis found that eating more fiber made women feel full faster. The same does not apply to men, unfortunately. The reasons appear to be hormonal.

Trying to interpret the nutrition data that is so helpfully provided on cereal boxes these days can be a little overwhelming, especially if you’re reading the chart while waiting in a fast-moving checkout lane. Go forth prepared with some choices ahead of time.

One very helpful Web site to check is called acaloriecounter.com. Find the breakfast cereal posting and you will discover a very handy chart that compares some 60 types of cereal (from All-bran to Apple Jacks, i.e. the entire gamut from sugar-coated to stripped down). It provides data on calories, total fat, saturated fat, carbohydrates, fiber, sugar and protein. There is even a column on trans fats and high-fructose corn syrup. Best of all, you can click on any one of these categories and see the cereals lined up from most to least (e.g., click on calories and you will find that Fiber One has the least (60) and Banana Nut Crunch has the most (240). Click on fiber and you will learn that Rice Krispies Treats Cereal has zero grams of fiber and Fiber One has the most (14 grams).

The site offers nine top choices. They were chosen based on the presence of trans fats, saturated fat, fiber and sugar. The top three were Cheerios, Shredded Wheat and Fiber One.

The list of unhealthiest cereals includes (sadly) most of the fun and flavorful cereals. At the top are my personal favorites: Honey Smacks (called Sugar Smacks when I was a child), Corn Pops (called Sugar Pops when I was a child) and Apple Jacks. I was happy  not to see Cap’n Crunch on there (apparently this brand was not included in the chart) but disappointed to see Golden Grahams. What, they’re not healthy?

For a list with a few sweeter, more toothsome choices, go to the Webmd site, where an unscientific survey (albeit one done by a registered dietitian) offers a few more flavorful selections.

“It doesn’t matter how good for you a cereal is; if it doesn’t taste good, you’re probably not going to eat it day after day,†concedes the article’s author, Elaine Magee.

She recommends adding flavor to the more virtuous cereals by sprinkling on some dried fruits and nuts (although these will increase the calorie count and, possibly, the sugar count, since most dried fruit is fairly sweet).

Magee also mentions that the highest-fiber cereals tend to fill you up for longer; she believes it is related to the glycemic index (one study that she quotes found that the glycemic index of corn flakes is twice as high as that of bran).

For her top choices, Magee accepts the presence of some sugar but recommends that the ideal cereal choice should get less than 25 percent of its calories from sugar. She offers a mathematical formula if you would like to figure it out yourself; but she also gives two suggestions: Kellogg’s Frosted Mini-wheats Strawberry Delight and Kashi GoLean Crunch.

Her top eight choices overall, as the best-tasting healthful cereals, include Grape Nuts (no surprise) and Frosted Mini-wheats (a surprise, to me at least). Also included in the list is Raisin Bran, two different types of Fiber One cereals and Quaker Oatmeal squares.

As for the question of whether you should have soy milk, rice milk or cow’s milk with your cereal (and will that be skim, low-fat or whole milk?), well, that will have to wait for a future column.