What's for Breakfast: French Toast Again

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook


Seems like we just saw French toast for breakfast. On these last two occasions, there has been no syrup served with the French toast. It's usually presented in little plastic tubs, an intense dose of high-fructose corn syrup (not real maple syrup, of course). But between the orange juice, with 13 grams of sugar in a four-ounce container--or 3 teaspoons worth--and the chocolate milk, with 26 grams of sugar in an eight-ounce serving--or 6.5 teaspoons--there's already plenty of sugar in this breakfast served to elementary school children.


The French toast does pose a problem, though. It's virtually impossible to eat with a "spork," the plastic utensil supplied to D.C. school kids. To here is the preferred solution: eat it with your hands.

If you didn't want the French toast, there was an alternative: cereal and also graham crackers. These Apple Jacks contain eight grams of added sugar--or two teaspoons--and the graham crackers six grams--or 1.5 teaspoons. This breakfast has a total sugar content of 53 grams of sugar, or 13 teaspoons. Enough sugar for a five-year-old, you think?

What's for Breakfast: A fiesta of carbs

French toast, graham crackers, chocolate milk, apple juice.

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

Yesterday, "Healthy Schools" legislation pending in the D.C. Council was approved in committee. The bill aspires to more standards and does set limits--minimum and maximum--on the number of calories kids can be served at school meals.

But one thing it doesn't do is regulate sugar, the "stealth ingredient" in school food. Food served as part of the federal school meals program is highly processed and cheap. One thing these meals have a lot of is sugar, because sugar is an easy way to boost calories without paying hardly anything for them.

And what kid doesn't like sugar?

But adults are supposed to be smarter than kids. And sugar can't be good for a city that has one of the highest childhood obesity rates in the country. A steady diet of too much sugar eventually leads to metabolic diseases such as diabetes. Why would adults routinely feed kids a diet that leads to diabetes?

The "French toast," which is cooked in a factory and arrives at school frozen, to be re-heated, is pure starch and turns to glucose--a form of sugar--once it is ingested. The graham crackers contain six grams of sugar, or about 1.5 teaspoons. The chocolate milk contains 26 grams of sugar--a bit more than six teaspoons and the same as Classic Coke.

The apple juice, while it sounds healthy, countains 20 grams of sugar in the form of fructose, or about five teaspoons. Fructose has been linked to a growing incidence of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Whole fruit would be a much better alternative than concentrated juice.

Is this an appropriate breakfast for school children caught up in an obesity epidemic?

What's for Breakfast: 15 Teaspoons of Sugar

Can you say c-e-r-e-a-l real fast three times?

That's what one little boy had on his tray at my daughter's elementary school. "See how skinny I am?" the boy explained, lifting up his skinny arms to show me. "I want to get big."

I wondered how he got past the ladies at the food line with three containers of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. But there it was, plain as day, along with the strawberry milk, the apple juice and a package of graham crackers already devoured.

Cinnamon Toast Crunch, made by General Mills, is one of those "healthy" cereals. "Whole Wheat" and "Rice" are printed in boldface on the label. It also has nine grams of sugar--a bit more than two teaspoons--in a 1-ounce serving. That would be in addition to the 28 grams of sugar in the 8-ounce container of strawberry milk (almost as much as Mountain Dew), the 20 grams of sugar in the 6-ounce container of apple juice, and the six grams of sugar in the graham crackers.

Let's see. We're up to 63 grams of sugar so far, about 15 teaspoons. A pretty sugary start to the morning, wouldn't you say? But that's if this little boy only eats one of those cereals. Oops. He's opening the second.

School meals are subject to a tangle of regulations that rivals the U.S. tax code. Even so, there's no limit to the amount of sugar a child can consume at school.

What happens, I ask him, if he can't finish all three cereals?

"I take it home in my back pack and save it for later."

Kids are just too smart these days.