What's for Breakfast: Whole Wheat Bagel

Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

A "whole wheat bagel" with "all natural sunflower butter" was the alternate choice for breakfast yesterday, along with juice and milk. Occasionally my daughter eats breakfast at school, so I got a chance to try the bagel and the sunflower butter.

The bagel is more like bread--very soft, but not bad. I'm curious to know who makes it and what's in it, but I haven't found a package label for it yet. Under the "Healthy Schools Act" passed by the D.C. Council earlier this year, the schools are required to post the ingredients for all the foods they serve in a place where the public can easily find them. They say they'll be launching an interactive website in November.



Here's a close-up of the Sunbutter (my daughter took these photos). Sunbutter is made by Red River Commodities in Fargo, N.D. According to the company's website, the "creamy" version of its sunflower butter contains sunflower seed, sugar, mono-diglycerides "to prevent separation," salt and "mixed tocopherols to preserve freshness."

A two-tablespoon serving of Sunbutter contains 200 calories, 16 grams of fat (mostly polyunsaturated and monounsaturated), three grams of sugar (less than a teaspoon) and seven grams of protein. It also delivers heft portions of Vitamin E, magnesium and copper.