What's for Lunch: Special K Strawberry Bar

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

An alert reader identified the Special K product in this photo of a school lunch brought from home here in D.C. as something the Kellogg company calls a "protein bar," which seems to be the popular way to sell "healthy" candy these days.

It's advertised as low-fat, but if you look under the hood, what you find is a highly processed industrial concoction of carbs and food additives coated with sugar.

The strawberry variety, seen here, may be low in fat--just five grams--but it's loaded with sugar, a whopping 15 grams, or a bit less than four teaspoons worth. Since this "protein bar" weighs in at a mere 45 grams, that means sugar constitutes one-third of the ingredients.

A virtual carbohydrate bomb, the interior of rice cereal and wheat gluten is coated with a frosting of sugar and palm oil.

"They're gross--I have a massive sweet tooth, but on the one occasion when I bought one from the vending machine at my office, it was so sweet I could barely finish it," said reader Vanessa. "The strawberry flavor is kind of chemical-tasting, too."

Little wonder. Consider the ingredients:

COATING (SUGAR, PALM KERNEL AND PALM OIL, MILK PROTEIN ISOLATE, YOGURT POWDER [CULTURED WHEY PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, CULTURED SKIM MILK, YOGURT CULTURES; HEAT-TREATED AFTER CULTURING], COLOR ADDED, SOY LECITHIN, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR), SOY PROTEIN ISOLATE, CORN SYRUP, STRAWBERRY FLAVORED FRUIT PIECES (SUGAR, CRANBERRIES, CITRIC ACID, NATURAL STRAWBERRY FLAVOR WITH OTHER NATURAL FLAVORS, ELDERBERRY JUICE CONCENTRATE FOR COLOR,SUNFLOWER OIL), INULIN, FRUCTOSE, POLYDEXTROSE, SUGAR, RICE STARCH, SOYBEAN AND PALM OIL WITH TBHQ FOR FRESHNESS, RICE CEREAL (RICE, WHEAT GLUTEN, SUGAR, DEFATTED WHEAT GERM, SALT, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, WHEY, MALT FLAVORING, REDUCED IRON, NIACINAMIDE, PYRIDOXINE HYDROCHLORIDE [VITAMIN B6], RIBOFLAVIN [VITAMIN B2], THIAMIN HYDROCHLORIDE [VITAMIN B1], FOLIC ACID, VITAMIN B12), CONTAINS TWO PERCENT OR LESS OF DEXTROSE, CALCIUM CARBONATE, GLYCERIN, SORBITOL, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, SALT, SOY LECITHIN, ASCORBIC ACID (VITAMIN C), XANTHAN GUM, POLYSORBATE 80, D-ALPHA TOCOPHEROL (VITAMIN E), NIACINAMIDE, ZINC OXIDE, REDUCED IRON, PYRIDOXINE HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B6), VITAMIN A PALMITATE, RIBOFLAVIN (VITAMIN B2), THIAMIN HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B1), BHT FOR FRESHNESS, ALMOND FLOUR, PARTIALLY DEFATTED PEANUT FLOUR, WHEAT STARCH, VITAMIN B12, FOLIC ACID, VITAMIN D.

Here's what it looks like at the Special K website:

You'd really be better off skipping the "protein bar" entirely and focus on that fresh strawberry pictured in the background, don't you think?

What's for Breakfast: Raisin Bran "The Worst"?

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

Raisin Bran is a "healthy" cereal, right?

Not according to a recent health column published on the Yahoo! site. Columnist David Zinczenko called Kellogg's Raisin Bran with the smiling little sunshine on the cover "the worst iconic cereal" of all. It's all about sugar. Here's what he had to say:

"It'll be hard to find a more sugar-loaded cereal than Raisin Bran. It’s sweeter than even Lucky Charms, Reese’s Puffs, or Cocoa Krispies. Some of that sugar can be attributed to the raisins’ natural blend of fructose and glucose, but the real culprit is the sticky white armor of sucrose that enrobes each piece of fruit. Both Kellogg’s and Post are guilty of this raisin mistreatment, so what should be a legitimately healthy bowl of fruit and grains pours out closer to a candy-coated dessert."

Fact is, giant food companies like Kellogg's give out huge sums in "discounts" (some people call them "kickbacks") to food service companies like Chartwells-Thompson--the one that provides food service for D.C. schools--to carry their products. And since Chartwells-Thompson serves millions of meals to kids all across the country, we can only imagine what those "discounts" add up to each year.

So there are corporate incentives to steer kids to sugary cereals like Raisin Bran, and also imprint the Kellogg's brand on them in the process.

In the breakfast above, this elementary school child had on her tray 11 grams of sugar in the Raisin Bran, 28 grams of sugar in the strawberry-flavored milk, 11 grams in the orange juice and six grams in the graham crackers. That's 56 total grams of sugar, or the equivalent of 14 teaspoons. (The American Heart Association recommends no more than six teaspoons of "added" sugar per day for an adult woman.)

But if you can't eat good ol' Raisin Bran, what can you eat? Zinczenko recommends another Kellogg's product: All Bran. Just add a few of your own raisins.

Breakfast: Another Dose of Sugar

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

Here's how D.C. kids get sugared-up at school in the morning: strawberry-flavored milk poured over Apple Jacks. I know, this picture looks staged, like a studio shot. But I assure you the person pouring the milk and eating the cereal was actually a third-grader. This time of year, we happen to get fantastic light through an east-facing wall of windows in the cafeteria of my daughter's elementary school, which makes for this striking photo.

The strawberry milk contains 28 grams of sugar in an 8-ounce carton. That's the equivalent of more than six teaspoons of sugar, a bit less than Mountain Dew. Of course, nearly half that sugar comes from lactose that occurs naturally in the milk. The rest is high-fructose corn syrup, which increasingly is being linked to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

The Apple Jacks are made by Kellogg's, a company with a huge footprint in D.C. school cafeterias. That's probably because giant food corporations like Kellogg's give big "rebates''--sometimes called kickbacks--to food service providers who use their products. These are like the stocking charges in supermarkets. The food makers pay to have their brands displayed.

Chartwells, the contracted food provider for D.C. Public Schools, itself is a huge company with a presence in more than 550 school districts around the country. With its vast distribution of products, it stands to take in huge sums of money in "rebates" from companies like Kellogg's. This might help explain why kids in D.C. are eating sugary cereals such as Apple Jacks in the morning.

A .63-ounce container of Apple Jacks contains 8 grams of sugar, about two teaspoons. Here are the other ingredients listed on the package:

Whole grain corn flour, wheat flour, whole grain oat flour, oat fiber, soluble corn fiber, salt, milled corn, dried apples, apple juice concentrate, cornstarch, cinnamon, natural and artificial flavor, sodium ascorbate and ascorbic acid (Vitamin C), modified corn starch, yellow #6, niacinimide, reduced iron, zinc oxide, turmeric color, baking soda, pyridoxine hydrochloride (Vitamin B6), blue #1, calcium phosphate, riboflavin (Vitamin B2), Thiamin Hydrochloride (Vitamin B1), red #40, Vitamin A Palmitate, BHT (Preservative), folic acid, Vitamin D, Vitamin B12.

There is some controversy surrounding BHT because it has been suspected of causing hyperactivity in children. But it is also sold in health food stores for purported anti-viral effects.