Craving that sugar high

By Matt Weafer
Column

There's nothing like waking up on a Saturday morning and fixing a heaping bowl of multi-colored, sugar-coated, whole grain cereal. The vibrant orange and yellow marshmallows dazzle my eyes, and the sugar pulses through my veins, invigorating me, juicing me up for the day.

Everyone needs a sugar rush to start the morning correctly.

At least that's the idea breakfast food companies market.

What has happened to the well balanced breakfast? When I was younger, I ate oatmeal, or bran flakes, possibly a banana, and a glass of orange juice. Now kids eat dessert for breakfast.

There is almost as much sugar in a bowl of Cocoa Puffs as there is in a 12 ounce soft drink. And parents wonder why their kids are always wired. Look at what kids shovel in their mouths.

Sweet cereals not only use boatloads of sugar, they also use artificial flavoring and dyes. There is nothing nutritious about artificial food. Would you feed your kid a plastic apple? It's an apple, right?

Although a cereal companies are now boasting "Whole Grain" products, the companies didn't change their products; they just changed their marketing techniques.

Yes some sweet cereals contain some whole grains, but they are still loaded with enriched wheat flour, and other refined carbohydrates.

Obesity, diabetes and similar diseases, and other health related abnormalities in children have risen in recent years. Largely, businesses do not look into causes, though. They seek out new products to correct the problem. So rather than produce healthy products to prevent obesity or diabetes, companies continue producing unhealthy products, but also produce products to relieve the ailments.

This is backwards. Kids are hopped up on sugar and red dye no. 5, so parents give them Ridlan to calm then down. Then after years of unnatural chemicals polluting the brain, other ailments follow – Dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, just to name a few.

Why give a kids a bowl of chemically altered sugar for breakfast, when bananas and plastic apples are cheaper, and better for them?