Is cereal any good for you?

Porridge.  Just add as little sugar as you can manage with.  I have about 75g and a level teaspoon is plenty of sugar for me - could easily have less.  It is the only food or drink I add sugar to.  Probably eat more than that in processed food.

Reduce by one grain of sugar each time and you will never notice the difference!

As it happens I just had a bowl of delicious porridge, with coconut milk and blueberries.

Lifestyles of the rich and famous on here!

Pozza cooked in water in microwave, splash of milk and sugar.

Rob,  I'm assuming you are training regularly, for  your next run and Triathlon.

That being the case, you need the calories and carbs, and can pretty much eat what you want.

Cereal is a horrible thing invented by the Americans. Invariably it involves starting the day with some kind of grain (often involving gluten) sugar and milk, 3 things you are better off without, but at the same time everyone tries to tell you it's healthy. It's not and it's not tasty either. Why eat something that tastes horrible that isn't any good for you. If you want to eat gluten, sugar and dairy then at least have cake for breakfast and enjoy what you are eating a bit more.

Again, porridge is so versatile. Don't pay over the odds, for something with a fancy label, and save your dosh for the add ins.

Try it with caremalised bananas, or Maple Syrup, or both together.

Delicious and a great start to a winters day.

Use CANADIAN maple syrup as a sugar substitute...far better for you and tastes beautiful in porridge.

I put on weight since Christmas actually whilst training, but that is cos I packed up smoking and seemed to replace every smoke with a snickers bar.  Got to nip that in the bud. 

I've got a big bag of tescos basic porridge in the cupboard I only ever cook it on the hob with water then eat it straight out of the pan with as little sugar as I dare.  But, honestly, I don't like it.  It is supposed to be the best thing for slow release energy though.  This granola this morning was lovely but I had about 1000 calories and it wasn't as nice as a fry up.

basic porridge is rank, far better to pay a few pence extra to actually enjoy it

How much difference can there be, it's just rolled oats. The basic stuff is fin and looks no different to the more expensive stuff beside it.

I add honey to mine, having cooked 2/3 water and 1/3 milk with a pinch of salt.

Sounds like you are a sugar junkie Rob. That may be OK while you are a fit and active young man but watch out as you get older. Like most days, I had porridge made from rolled oats and water with no added sugar this morning. I love it, although I'll admit that I do have a big fry up once or twice a week for a change.

Never used to be foinavon.  When I am on the wagon though, and even more so now that I have packed up smoking, I eat loads of chocolate and drink loads of diet coke.

No cereal is good for you. But it's the 'two bowls of' story on the heels of the '2kgs of spuds in 24 hours' story that concerns me. That's a potentially disastrous pattern of raising your blood sugar your developing. No amount of exercise will recover that, it will probably only speed up the metabolic damage.

I don't do anything until I've had 2 cups of tea and a proper bowl of porridge.  Keeps me going for a couple of hours and then I have a tub of cottage cheese.

FM:  I am in part doing it to ween me off my previous habit of eating last night's dinner.  whether it be chilli and rice, spag bol, shepherd's pie or baked spuds with veg and gravy.  Beginning to think that was healthier now, at least no sugar, lots of salt mind.

All cereals containing  refined wheat are full of sugar - as obviously is bread/ cakes etc. This high ( daily) intake of  refined wheat, is the main reason for people gaining weight.

Maybe Porridge is ok but who is gonna eat that without adding sugar?

Me. Haven't put sugar on anything for years. I put some blueberries and raspberries in it.

Big_Issue     23 Apr 15 11:21 
How much difference can there be, it's just rolled oats. The basic stuff is fin and looks no different to the more expensive stuff beside it.

I add honey to mine, having cooked 2/3 water and 1/3 milk with a pinch of salt.



Porridge oats are good for you. I love  them. My old Dad always used to add salt to his porridge ( proper traditional way ?) tried it once - it was disgusting, tasted like phlegm

Right I'll finish this packet and never again, you've all convinced me.  No harm done.  I've probably averaged one pack of cereal a year for the past 15 years.

I don't do anything until I've had 2 cups of tea and a proper bowl of porridge.  Keeps me going for a couple of hours and then I have a tub of cottage cheese.

And this is why all these people who think they are releasing sugars slowly are deluded. 'A proper bowl of porridge' should satiate you if it is doing its job properly. But the fact you are eating only two hours later shows that the sugars are released quickly. You eat it, it shoots your blood sugar up, insulin is released to drive the sugars out of your blood and (because it isn't an exact mechanism) you end up in 90 mins or so with less blood sugar than you should have and then you have to eat again. And so it goes on, all day. If I eat 3 rashers of bacon and 2 eggs for breakfast, scrambled in grass-fed butter and no carbs, I don't feel hungry again till the evening. Why? Because fat doesn't raise your blood sugar and correspondingly insulin doesn't get released. You therefore don't get glucose driven into your fats cells and you don't get hypoglycemia from that action and have to eat. Low fat diets that replace fats with grains are miserable and unhealthy.

I don't do anything until I've had 2 cups of tea and a proper bowl of porridge.  Keeps me going for a couple of hours and then I have a tub of cottage cheese.

And this is why all these people who think they are releasing sugars slowly are deluded. 'A proper bowl of porridge' should satiate you if it is doing its job properly. But the fact you are eating only two hours later shows that the sugars are released quickly. You eat it, it shoots your blood sugar up, insulin is released to drive the sugars out of your blood and (because it isn't an exact mechanism) you end up in 90 mins or so with less blood sugar than you should have and then you have to eat again. And so it goes on, all day. If I eat 3 rashers of bacon and 2 eggs for breakfast, scrambled in grass-fed butter and no carbs, I don't feel hungry again till the evening. Why? Because fat doesn't raise your blood sugar and correspondingly insulin doesn't get released. You therefore don't get glucose driven into your fats cells and you don't get hypoglycemia from that action and have to eat. Low fat diets that replace fats with grains are miserable and unhealthy.

Just don't get why people are brainwashed into paying premium price, for goods with branding, and fancy packaging.

Do you think someone takes the trouble to sort through oats, and use sub standard ones for budget lines?

They are identical!

Same thing with sweetcorn. Seventeen pence for a big tin from "Mozzas" compared to three times as much for "Jolly Green Giant".

Tinned chopped tomatoes, again a third the price of brands, and just the same.

Not all oats are identical. Often oats are grown as a rotational crop alongside wheat and so can contain the gluten from wheat, whereas some are not and hence have no wheat gluten in them. If your dinner is healthy then having that for breakfast is much better than having cereal.

I like porridge but usually have it with some sort of fruit.  All porridge doesn't taste the same even Quaker Oats and Scots Porridge Oats are different.

agree and own brands/economy are worst of the lot. If you cant taste difference fair enough buy the cheapo version

got to admit some of the melodramatics on here are quite funny mind.  There was a thing on QI where they are talking about bread and milk and Alan Davies says "yeah that's right, apparently we are not supposed to eat bread and milk".

David MItchell gave him both barrels.  "Of course it is alright to eat bread and milk, we've been eating bread and milk for thousands of years.  It is demonstrably fine.  Do you think we are all supposed to live until we are 200 years old but because of all this poisonous bread and milk we keep devouring we can barely limp past 90".  Alan Davies looked like he wanted to cry.

get oats that are not contaminated by gluten.
i would but im milk intolerant

Totally agree with OP about recommended serving sizes. Read the nutritional information on the box of cereal and you know how Gulliver felt on his travels.

Porridge is the worst thing you can eat my doctor told me ....

Ha, yeah that was a funny QI moment Rob. Oats and honey for me, sometimes with some blueberries thrown in for good measure

David Mitchell is wrong. The wheat we eat today is nothing like the wheat of  75 years ago, never mind  ' thousands of years'  ago.

swap bread and milk for ****, alcohol or sugar and it sounds like something alf garnet would say in the 70s

If it tastes nice it's full of sugar.
Sugar has approx. 56 different names as well.
Agave, Fruit juice concentrate, maple syrup etc. ALL sugar. If it's sweet it's sugar.
Sugar is the devil.

"If it tastes nice it's full of sugar."
I don't like sweet things and and like the taste of lots of food.
Including porridge, with no sugar!

porridge with a sliced banana , drizzled with honey.

Just had two more bowls, just re checked the ingredients and the number 2 ingredient is sugar.  and all the fruit is dried AND sweetened.  I will just finish this packet and be done with it but it is a shame that a lot of people might be eating this rubbish/feeding it to their kids genuinely thinking it is good stuff.  it is simple and tasty though.

Cheap oats are like powder.  I would imagine are the leftovers when they take the decent oats out to use for decent porridge.  Overcooked, it ends up like a mushy gruel.

I undercook jumbo oats if I can get them (Holland and Barrett used to do Neal's Yard).  Or Scotts.

Can't see the point in saving a few pence on an already very cheap product.

Haven't seen Neals Yard in my shop lately but available here…

http://www.hollandandbarrett.com/shop/product/neals-yard-wholefoods-100-organic-jumbo-oats-60039796

read the reviews!

Free delivery today!

£1.99 for 1 kg.

Just ordered 2 for £3.98 delivered!

^
Thanks Jack

Just done the same

I love my cereal and was eating two bowls each day until recently. I have cut down to one and was having a mixture of honey nut cornflakes (Kellogs) and mini honey nut shredded wheat. I had a check this morning and the honey nut cornflakes are 30% sugar! The mini honey nut shredded wheat are 15% sugar.
I found some rice crispies which were ca 8% sugar and so will combine these with my mini honey nut shredded wheat for now.

If you are going to overeat for one meal, the best one would be breakfast, since you have the rest of the day to burn off the calories.

Having read a few of those articles about exercise, diet and weight loss recently, the suggestion was that sugar was the enemy.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-32417699

Mitchell’s very funny the way he exasperatedly cuts through the nonsense, but in this case he’s plain wrong for two reasons.

As Facts says, the wheat we eat today is genetically altered from the wheat we ate for a few thousand years, the man that created our wheat got a Nobel Prize for it in 1970. At its worst, wheat will destroy your intestines, but most people who have given it up, myself included, have observed a massive improvement in health, including a complete reversal of the sugar addiction that masks itself as ‘taste’. You think you like the taste, the truth is closer to a need for it created by the wheat polypeptides binding with opiate receptors in the brain.

The other point about wheat is, we’ve eaten it for a few thousand years but for at least 2.5 million years we didn’t eat it because it isn’t a natural food for humans and we had no idea how to make it edible. So in terms of our evolution, we’ve been eating it since last Thursday.

If we can't eat wheat then that procludes cereal (easy), bread (hmm quite like bread) and what else?  Pasta?  That just leaves rice and spuds, and someone told me off earlier on this thread for eating too many spuds.

I forgot, also they have blood samples going back prior to the introduction of the wheat we now eat and the incidence of Celiac disease, the most damaging consequence of wheat consumption, is four times higher than it was 60 years ago.

yeah but is that one of these 1 in a million people is now 4 in a million people things.

1 in a 100

Source:

.http://www.mayo.edu/research/discoverys-edge/celiac-disease-rise

I know it sounds melodramatic and conspiracy theory nuts, but no one is going to wake you up from this food Matrix we are living in but you. I really think it is that serious, if you think it's nuts laughable, stupid then fine. But from where I stand, your GP, the drug companies and food companies have no interest in you being well and healthy, they want you buying, sick and addicted.

Me too lol, I make my own muesli with oats, pumpkin and sunflower seeds, mixed fruit and chia, I also make my own oat milk which is great if you haven't tried it before.  Haven't used the neal's yard stuff before but it seems to be well liked.

Just had a macdonald's for lunch.  Next you'll be telling me that's unhealthy.

Seriously all things in moderation imo.  I'll do a big shop at the weekend and next week will be choc full of vegetables, spuds and rice.

Rye bread is healthy.

porridge with a very ripe banana ,very small amount of honey as its sweeter than suger ,you dont need much .

or muesli with some fresh  fruit and natural yogurt .

Just had a macdonald's for lunch.  Next you'll be telling me that's unhealthy.

The most unhealthy thing about Mcdonalds is actually the bread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNtjV3j3Tp4

a bowl of cereal is just a bowl of sugar. avoid if you can. I haven't had any cereal for nearly a year now and I don't miss it, even porridge which I used to quite like (with raisins or sultanas)

Off to buy some "grass-fed butter", sounds lovely. Don't suppose Aldi's stock it ?

Kerrygold, goes in my coffee sometimes too along with the double cream.

I gave up grains just over a year ago, never ever going back.

Jumbo oats arrived from Holland and Barrett.  Will give a taste report later, but on first inspection they are not as 'jumbo' as they used to be.  Scotts may be bigger.

Disappointed.  Hope Facts will enjoy his!