In a past post about the importance of reading food labels and understanding serving sizes, I wrote about serving sizes of breakfast cereals.
A few years ago, I was on a mission to find a tasty, yet not-too-sugary granola. In the end, I moved to Bob’s Red Mill Muesli, which satisfies my need for a bit of crunch in my yogurt, without any added sugar. (It does have some sugar from raisins and dates.)
During my granola exploration, I often found myself enthused about the seemingly small amount of sugar in a given product, only to realize the amount of sugar listed corresponded to what I considered a very small serving size.
You have to do the math when you look at serving sizes. For example, a cereal that lists 3g of added sugar, with a serving size of 1/3 of a cup, has more sugar than one that lists 4g of added sugar with a serving size of 1/2 a cup. (The former has 9g per cup, the latter has 8g.)
My overall conclusion about granola: If it’s sweet enough that I would eat it for a snack at night, it’s too sweet. Unfortunately, that’s the case with most of them.
After a newsletter last year about the way our tastes change when we change habits, I received this note from a reader: “When you posted two years ago about no-sugar-added Muesli, I thought- “Really?” But I knew that even though I am thin, I avoid fried foods and red meat, and otherwise eat in a way that is very healthy, my A1C was borderline, so I gave it a try. You were right. I experimented and found four or five no-sugar-added Muesli types that I like. Now, when I occasionally have a sweet, it tastes really sweet. I have carried that thinking through much of my cooking.”
How have your tastes changed as a result of changing your eating habits? Please join the conversation with your comments…
Best regards,
David