Chicks Swulls

Brace yourselves, what you are about to read may come as a shock to you.

As a grandmother, I am much more permissive with TOF than I was with my own two children. (Insert gasps of horror here)

When GlitterGurl and her big brother were growing up, sugar filled breakfasts were taboo in our home. Even when it came to our weekly Sunday ritual of Country Donuts, they were required to eat a nice, hot, healthy bowl of oatmeal, before sharing ONE chocolate sprinkle donut.

I like to think of myself as a pioneer of such things as fruit smoothies, grated carrots in the spaghetti sauce, frozen mini bagels, applesauce in the brownie mix and Nutella on rice cakes. My kids were eating that and liking it WAY before it became chic. Cold cereal choices were pretty much limited to Cheerios, Cheerios and sometimes Cheerios.

Fast forward to late 2006. TOF is ready for finger food. Mema heads off to the grocery store and buys a super sized box of CHEERIOS. Excellent first choice, with only 1 gm of sugar per serving. Supposedly, babies can't choke on them because of the hole in the center. I never tested this method when he was very small, as I broke them in half before serving them. Cheerios were a big hit! But then this Mema got bored with that choice and soon I discovered some lovely little puffy fruit and veggie snacks in the baby food aisle that cost about 200 times what the Cheerios did. So what does any thrifty Mema do? Much to Auntie GlitterGurl's dismay, she wanders back to the cereal aisle to reevaluate the choices there.

Then I got busted. I had inadvertently left the Cocoa Puffs and Chicks Swulls (Trix Swirls for those of you not familiar with preschool vocabulary) on the counter and GlitterGurl had a fit. "We never got to eat this when we were little!!" "I see who your favorite is."

So I said to her:

Did you know that ready-to-eat cereal eaters consume less fat, less cholesterol and more fiber than non-cereal eaters? Cereals also deliver important vitamins, minerals and other essential nutrients, making cereal a top source of key nutrients in children´s diets.

Other cereal benefits:

Ready-to-eat cereals, including presweetened cereals, account for only 5% of sugar in children´s diets.

Ready-to-eat cereal is the No. 1 source of whole grains in a child´s diet today.

More frequent cereal eaters tend to have healthier body weights and lower Body Mass Index measures.

Studies also demonstrate the benefits of eating breakfast. A 1998 study showed that children who eat breakfast tend to perform better at school. Compared to children who skip breakfast, children who eat breakfast score higher on tests, are less likely to miss class or be tardy, have fewer reported discipline problems, and make fewer trips to the office.

For more information about kids and cereals, please visit Cereal Health and Wellness.

Right now if you visit here you will find a $1 off coupon for one of four General Mills cereals.

Oh sure, they're not steel cut, organic oats, but they are a healthier choice than they were in the past. Recently, General Mills announced a commitment to further reduce sugar in cereals advertised to kids under 12 to single digit grams of sugar per serving. So GlitterGurl, go ahead and enjoy some Cocoa Puffs or Trix Swirls now.

Thank you to MyBlogSpark and General Mills for generously providing me with the coupons for their cereal and also for the wealth of information at their website. I was not compensated monetarily for this post and the above post is a true experience and was not influenced by any source.