I recently came across some advice for late-night snacks from Men’s Health. According to the Weight Loss Coach, any combination of these can make the perfect late-night snack:
It’s important to remember to stay away from carbohydrates for your late-night snacks. As far as cheese goes, I’m a huge fan of Kraft’s Natural Marbled Colby & Monterey Jack Cheese Cubes.
Apparently eating Cheerios for breakfast every morning doesn’t warrant the “pat on the back” I’ve been giving myself for the past few years. The FDA recently sent General Mills, the makers of Cheerios, a sternly worded letter warning them about the health claims on Cheerios boxes. In the letter, the FDA notes Cheerios is “misbranded” in a way that makes the cereal sound like a drug to prevent, mitigate, and treat high cholesterol and heart disease.
The Fitness Insider blog, over at Men’s Health, did a good job of breaking down the health claims made by Cheerios and separating the fact from the fiction. Here’s what they had to say:
The sell: ”You can lower your cholesterol 4 percent in 6 weeks.”
The science: This claim is based on a 1998 study in which people who ate 3 cups of Cheerios a day lowered their LDL (bad) cholesterol by 7 points. The box says this makes Cheerios “the only leading cold cereal proven to lower cholesterol.”
The fine print: The University of Minnesota researchers who conducted this study credit this LDL reduction to the cereal’s content of soluble fiber (1 g per cup). So any cereal that provides the same amount of soluble fiber should have the same effect. But here’s a more important point: Is lowering your LDL by 7 points really that signficant? I’m a bit of a cholesterol skeptic, so I don’t believe so. Beyond that, though, if you eat the cereal, but don’t control your overall calorie intake—thinking simply that Cheerio’s has the magical power to lower your cholesterol—what happens to your triglycerides? How about your good HDL cholesterol? In the study, the Cheerio eaters, 65% of whom were men, consumed about 1900 calories a day, so they weren’t overeating. And remember, to experience this reduction, you have to eat 3 cups of Cheerio’s every day—and that means you’ll be going through boxes pretty fast.
Does this mean you should stop eating Cheerios for breakfast? Not exactly. The truth is, you could be doing much worse with regard to your cereal choices. The real issue here seems to be that the claims on Cheerios boxes may go a little to far (possibly so far as to bring it into the realm of a “drug” under FDA regulations). So, if it’s between Cheerios and Lucky Charms in the morning – I’d go with the Cheerios.
