Does a healthy cereal exist?; Which restaurants are the healthiest?; More bad news for aspartame.
Finding a healthy cereal for you or your kids is challenging
Healthier Cereal Options
Some of my clients love cereal, not for breakfast but as a nighttime snack. The question of which cereals are the healthiest options comes up frequently. There are very few I can suggest due to the high sugar content, food dyes and coloring, and artificial ingredients.
The Environmental Working Group put together a list of preferable cereal options. The list can be found at:
https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/2022/08/serve-healthy-mornings-home-ewgs-top-organic-cereal-choices
Ideally, look for a cereal serving size with 10 or fewer grams of added sugar per serving. Avoid cereals with a long list of added artificial ingredients, sugar in several different forms, additives, colorings, and dyes.
What you add to the cereal is just as important. Choose organic or raw milk (if permitted in your state or if you own dairy shares), or choose an unsweetened milk alternative such as coconut, almond, or cashew. (If you consume a lot of non-dairy milk, you may want to consider making your own!)
Which Restaurants are the Healthiest Choices?
You would think a $100 steak is healthier than a $20 steak but is it?
If you spend hundreds of dollars on a meal, does it mean you consumed a healthier meal than if you ate at a Red Robbin, Applebees, or another more affordable chain restaurant?
It depends but more than likely, whether your meal cost $20 or $100, it is still an inflammatory meal.
No one likes when I answer this question because most people enjoy a meal out. The information I will share does not mean you cannot eat out. Still, if you eat out regularly, whether in a high-end restaurant, fast food, or takeout, you may want to re-evaluate your eating habits and try to cook more often to control what goes into your body.
A restaurant serving organic food will be a healthier option, or a place serving farm-to-table vegetables from a farm that doesn’t spray its produce.
But the real question comes down to this: What do they use for cooking your food?
Ask.
The majority of places use corn, soybean, or vegetable oil. These are refined, inflammatory oils high in omega 6 EFAs.
If they tell you they use olive oil, I am skeptical that it is olive oil because it is expensive, and most places are not going to spend that money on oil to cook with. Many olive oils are adulterated, meaning they have added refined oils and contain very little olive oil. Some foods are cooked in heaping amounts of butter (not grass-fed).
Bottom line: Make the best choices when going out to eat. Tell your server not to bring bread or rolls to the table. Drink an herbal tea instead of a sugar-filled beverage, and choose extra vegetables instead of rice, fries, or potato.
But there is not much you can do about the oils your food is cooked with. Skip any fried foods to reduce the number of inflammatory ingredients.
The best thing you can do is cook more at home and reserve eating out for special occasions. Unfortunately, eating out several times weekly has become commonplace as a society, but it is not doing our health any good.
A marker for systemic inflammation is the CRP test. Your number should be less than 1, ideally.
Aspartame and Anxiety
More bad news for artificial sweeteners and your mental health
Researchers from FSU College of Medicine have linked aspartame to anxiety in mice (Thomas, 2022). Not only that, but this result carried down two generations and possibly longer. This may be related to your gut health and how your gut health is not only dependent on your birth mother’s gut but also on your maternal grandmother’s gut health.
The study used a high dose of diet soda, equivalent to 6-8 eight-ounce cans daily for 12 weeks. Most people do not consume this much soda, but the study did not compare lower soda intake.
There are two take-home messages from this study.
Avoid artificial sweeteners or, at the very least, minimize them. They are found in thousands of food products, not just diet soda, so read the labels.
For instance, I had a client that was adamant they were not consuming any fake sugar. As I looked over the food log, brands, and labels, I discovered that artificial sweetener was in the protein powder, low-calorie English muffin, protein bars, flavored water, and their vitamins.
You cannot control what your maternal mother and grandmother consumed or their gut health, so start working on yours!
For more information on how artificial sweeteners may impact your gut and mental health and has a list of foods that contain artificial sugar and a link to a documentary, go to this link: https://trufoodsnutrition.com/ new-study-shows-artificial-sweeteners-damage-mental-health/
Source
Thomas, R. (2022, Dec. 8). FSU research links common sweetener with anxiety. https://news.fsu.edu/news/university-news/2022/12/08/fsu-research-links-common-sweetener-with-anxiety/