Every Wednesday night I go to a meeting for our Shaklee team where we learn about nutrition and health, the latest science breakthroughs regarding health, fitness, and wellness and the science behind our products. It is a great time of fun and friendship as well, but last night there was an intervention, though the speaker didn’t know it. Last night they targeted food dyes and other additives to our foods. Sadly the speaker held up a certain ghostly cereal box (BOoo). Noooooo, la, la, la,laaaaaa. I want to remain ignorant! Sigh, not my cereal!
When fall comes there are 2 things I look forward to, the Pumpkin Spice Latte from Starbucks and this lovely ghostly cereal that only comes out near Halloween. I love the day when I turn the corner and there it is, not just on the cereal aisle, but usually on its own special display of three ghouly, monsterly boxes each in its own color! MMmmmmMMMmm and I love it. That crunchy cereal and the sweet little “marshmallows” and the blue milk at the end! Yes, I throw nutrition to the wind and I tell myself the milk is blue because it is full of berry juice and marshmallows are a plant and plant based diets are good, right?!! I mean it is whole grain right?! But, no more! My Shaklee team reminded me of what I know to be true-what we eat matters. Tonight my ghost died. It was exorcised with the silver bullet of nutritional truth-OK, I know you can’t kill a ghost and silver bullets are for his friend in the other box, but work with me I’m mourning. One always mixes metaphors when mourning.
The concerns for this cereal were the poor nutritional value with almost 30% of the calories coming from sugar as well as the food dyes and BHT with known health risks regarding each. EWG.org is a great resource to check out the healthfulness of your food items as well as cosmetics. EWG rates on a number scale and a red, yellow, green scale to make it easy to see where things fall. I plugged in my beloved cereal and on a scale of 1-10 it rates an 8 or an orangey red! Um, noooo don’t cheer, 8 is bad, sigh; 1 is good! The wisest thing is to read your labels and choose labels with the fewest, most natural ingredients. My cereal doesn’t quite meet my goals for what I think is best for me.
Oh, my blue friend you will be missed, but I love myself enough to be careful what I put in my body because I want my healthspan to match my lifespan as closely as possible, so we must part ways. You my friend are dead to me!