Today is National Cereal Day! First, I want to give some love to my favorite cereal: Peanut Butter Puffins

Puffins remind me of Butterfinger filling in a puffy, crunchy cereal square. Delightful!

Since we’re on the topic of cereal, I might as well break out my…

Cranky Guide to Cereal

• Choose cereal that has less sugar than a pile of Oreos. Generally, you shouldn’t have more than 6 teaspoons/22 grams of sugar per day if you consume a total of 1600 calories a day. If you eat around 2200 calories a day, you shouldn’t consume more than 12 teaspoons/44 grams of sugar per day. Sounds like a lot, right? Not really when you consider that one cup of Kellogg’s Raisin Bran Crunch Cereal has 20 grams of sugar–that’s about four Oreo cookies worth of sugar. Yowza!
• If you’re vegan — watch out for animal crap masquerading as a hard-to-pronounce other. Here are some things to consider: “confectioner’s glaze” comes from insects; E471 is a synthetic fat additive that comes from both vegetable and animal sources (fat) and, unless it’s explicitly defined, you don’t know from which source when it’s listed; and Carmine/Crimson Lake/Cochineal/Natural Red 4/C.I. 75470/E120 are red food dyes that come from beetles. That’s not an exhaustive list, but, seriously–unless you’re eating a certified vegan cereal–the added sugar alone is probably not vegan (white sugar is typically filtered – to de-color – through bone char); so, in my wise-ass opinion, I say: be mindful, not overzealous.
• Choose a cereal that has a reasonable amount of calories per serving size. I don’t know about you, but this pretty much encapsulates how I eat cereal: [source]
  Beware of misleading serving sizes!  Most of us eat 2 servings or more of cereal and don’t even realize it. When you add your dairy or non-dairy milk to the equation, you’re eating about 400 calories of cereal if you’re not careful (plus loads of sugar!). Check out Hungry Girl’s serving size experiment and video here for more of an idea what I’m talkin’ ’bout! You might also want to try her cool tip to “Puff That Stuff” (see here). Basically, you can add volume to your favorite cereal by adding a puffy cereal with less calories. For example, I am not satisfied with one serving (3/4 cup) of Puffins for 110 calories; but you can add a cup of puffed millet for 60 calories. That way you have a total of almost 2 cups cereal for only 170 calories. A cup of unsweetened almond milk is 40 calories — which is more than half the calories of non-fat milk.
• Compare/Contrast. See how your fave cereal compares to others out there. You might be shocked or pleasantly surprised. Check out this cool comparison here of some mainstream commercial cereals.
• Remember that “No Trans Fat” doesn’t mean no trans fat. Technically, if a cereal product has less than .5g of trans fat per serving, it can list “0g” of trans fat. But, pals, if we don’t eat just one serving of cereal, doesn’t that mean that by the time we’ve licked the bowl clean from our 3rd serving, we’ve ingested a bit of trans fat? Why yes, yes, it does! D’oh! You can find out if a cereal really has trans fat by checking for “hydrogenated” and “partially-hydrogenated” oils in the ingredients list. Post’s Cupcake Pebbles has “0g” of transfat listed, but if you check out the ingredients, “hydrogenated vegetable oil” comprises the 3rd ingredient! Yikes! Might as well generally be a bit skeptical of claims made on cereal boxes — see here on how Kellogg’s wants to make weight loss claims on its cereals!
• Some Like it Hot. Bored with cold cereal? Try it hot! My favorite brand of hot cereal is Country Choice.  I like to eat it with just a little stevia added. One serving has 130 calories and is FILLING!
• Think Outside the (Cereal)Box. Use your cereal for somethin’ other than a cereal bowl! Try my recipe here for yogurt pie in a Puffins crust. You can use soy yogurt to veganize it. You can also make vegan Rice Krispy Treats.

What’s your favorite cereal? Any fun ways to eat it?

<3,

The Cranky One