Chocolate Cookies vs. Chocolate Cereal: The Breakdown

As school starts up again, it's time to think about nutrition of cereals, snacks, and treats. So I really enjoyed comparing this chocolate cereal with chocolate sandwich cookies.

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Here's the ingredient list, and the answer to the cookie/cereal quiz. The label on the left, even though it lists filling as the first ingredient, is actually the label for the cereal. The label on the right is for the cookies.

So how do the two compare?

Sugar: 30 grams of Krave contain 10 grams of sugar, making it 33% sugar by weight. This is actually a little less than some others, like Cocoa Puffs (37% sugar) or Golden Crisp (52% sugar). But compare it with Dare chocolate cookies: 40 grams of cookie (that's two cookies) contains 12 g of sugar, or 30%. The cookies have less sugar by weight than the cereal!

Oil: Both treats also contain oil, which adds calories. The cereal contains about 12% fat, while the cookies contain 25% fat.

Calories: 40 grams of Krave contains 160 calories, less than the 200 calories you'll find in 40 grams of cookie.

It's hard to which one sounds more like dessert, the cereal or the cookies. Certainly neither of them go in a healthy breakfast. But if you're choosing a sweet treat for your children, keep this in mind: Krave has vitamins added, which may interest you, and a bowl of Krave might take a little longer to eat than two cookies. All the air bubbles in Krave cereal (honestly, the stuff feels about as heavy as Styrofoam) spread out the sugar, giving you less sugar per bite. So if you're choosing a dessert that your children can savor for a longer period of time, the cereal might be a better choice!

Healthy Gummies?

How healthy are these gummi vitamins?

Since the first ingredient is glucose syrup (a kind of corn syrup), and the second ingredient is natural cane sugar (plain sugar), these gummi vitamins contain surprises that parents might not expect!

If you'd like to give your children candy fortified with vitamins, this is the vitamin for you. If you'd like to avoid giving your children extra sugar, make sure to check labels!

Cereal Labels

Ever since I started candy experiments, I've become way more interested in food labels, especially labels that try to convince you that sugary snacks are health food. Here's a new favorite:

"More whole grain than any other ingredient" sounds like a good thing, because nutrition experts are constantly advising us to eat more whole grain. But look what else you get with all that whole grain:

That's right. LOTS of sugar, as well as corn syrup. Which means:

that this candy is more than 1/3 sugar (37%, to be precise).

This snack might make a yummy dessert, but I won't be serving it for breakfast. I won't be serving it for dessert, either. I much prefer cookies.*

*Though I did realize, on the airplane ride home from DC, that serving sugar cereal for dessert might have some advantages. It's so full of air that kids have to eat several pieces of cereal to get the amount of sugar they'd get from a few pieces of candy. In other words, it takes a little bit longer to eat, and on an airplane ride, that matters!

USASEF 2012

Well, we made it to and through the USA Science and Engineering Festival once again. As before, kids played the "Marshmallow Game," in which they tried to sink marshmallows by squashing them to learn about density, showed all the colors that make up M&M brown, demonstrated how sour Warheads bubble when dropped in baking soda water, and let kids weigh candy to find the hidden candy in their other foods. Good moments:

--Every time a child stared at the 10 rolls of Smarties that match the sugar contents of one bottle of orange soda

--The kids who were so interested in their chromatography papers that they took them home

--Every time a parent read our blinding orange sign to their kids, so we didn't have to waste our voices repeating the message: "The candy is for experiments, not for eating!"

--The mother who learned that brown M&Ms actually contain red dye, when she'd always told her dye-sensitive children that brown was all right because it was made of chocolate

--Watching my family members, as well as a bunch of super volunteers, step up to demonstrate these exciting experiments.

This picture gives you only a small idea of just how big the convention center was. We were near the back of the room, nearly halfway down, so there were almost as many booths stretching out on the other side from us as well. One report said that USASEF attracted so many people, it made the second biggest crowd ever to fill the convention center. I'll believe it--it was very crowded!

Everybody joined in the fun--family members, friends, and even my kids. For awhile, my four-year-old was the only person manning the Sink a Marshmallow station. She had the basics exactly right: Squash the marshmallow enough to sink it; if you sink it, you get to try a big marshmallow.

I also found some new candy experiments as I was wandering around. Check back for details!

Sugar in juice

Since my kids have been making Find Hidden Candy posters for their science fairs, we've been reading a lot of labels recently. Today I noticed that a 12 oz serving of apple juice has more sugar (40 g) than a can of Squirt (37 g). I guess that makes sense, if soda has been sweetened to resemble juice, but it still surprised me. Need to be aware of sugar in juice as well as soda!

A Healthy Airplane Snack?

On a recent family plane trip, my husband bought a snack to keep my toddler happy for a few minutes.  He chose the $3 Cranberry Nut Mix, which contained "Raisins, Cranberries, Yogurt Raisins, Yogurt Cranberries, Almonds & Walnuts."  A healthy choice?

Not as healthy as he thought.  "Yogurt" confectioner's coating, according to the USDA, is 62% sugar and 27% fat.  (Ours also contained the artificial color titanium dioxide--that bright white doesn't come from yogurt!)  Sweetened cranberries are 65% sugar according to the same website.  Even naturally sweet raisins contain 59% sugar.

So what's the total amount of sugar in a 30 g serving of "healthy" nuts and berries?  16 grams, or 53%--the same as four mint Lifesavers.

We ended up protecting our child by eating the "yogurt" fruit ourselves.

This snack might be better named "Sugar Cranberry Nut Mix," since it's more than half sugar.  

New Experiment Cards

I put together a new set of experiment cards with eight experiments on a page.  The new cards include Lifesaver Lights, What Makes Pop Rocks Pop, WARHEADS Acid Test, Hot/Cold Dissolving Race, Sink/Float, and Find Hidden Candy.  Print them off to use in the kitchen, or pass them out as gifts or Trick-or-Treat prizes.

Vitaminwater: Candy in Disguise

Britain's Advertising Standards Authority just ruled that Coca Cola's vitaminwater "has too much sugar to be accurately described as nutritious," and that the company broke rules by advertising its products as "delicious and nutritious."  How much sugar does one bottle actually have?


A fan photo on vitaminwater's Facebook page shows that an 8 oz serving in a bottle of Power-C dragonfruit flavored drink contains 13 g sugar.  But the bottle holds 2.5 servings, or almost 33 grams of sugar.  Drinking one bottle is like eating eight mint Life Savers plus an Altoid.


The company's product photos show only the side of the bottle with the list of vitamins, never the sugar content.  Follow their links to the FAQ questions page (if your browser loads it at all), and you'll find this statement, which makes vitaminwater sugar sound downright nutritious: "we formulate vitaminwater with a blend of cane sugar (a pure, high-quality, natural sweetener that comes from the sugar cane plant) and crystalline fructose."  But sugar is sugar, no matter how it's advertised as pure and natural.  And the blurb doesn't say how much sugar there is.


Want to find drinks that really are "delicious and nutritious," as vitaminwater was once advertised to be?  Check labels and play Find Hidden Candy.  You'll learn more from the labels than from any advertisement.


Or have a cool drink of plain water.  Now that's delicious.

Nutrition Labels Online

Still on the quest to understand sugar in food, today I checked out the USDA National Nutrient Database. It has nutrition information for hundreds of branded and generic foods, although not much candy (too bad for me!) I learned about the sugar content in canned white beans (0.29%), white wheat flour (0.27-0.92%), yogurt candy coating (63%), Twizzlers Strawberry Twists (39.64%), Post Golden Crisp cereal (53.9%), and Kellogg's Rice Krispies Treats cereal (31%). Kind of makes you wonder which one's actually the candy.

Want to try the fun yourself? Here's the link:
http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/

More Hidden Candy

My brother-in-law read me all the cereal labels in his kitchen today.  Check these out:

Brand	Serving Size	Sugar per Serving	Percent Sugar	Candy Equivalent
Bran Flakes (Price Right)	29 g	5 g	17 %	1 mint
Honey Bunches of Oats	29 g	5 g	17%	1 mint
Cinnamon Life	32 g	8 g	25 %	2 large wintergreen Life Savers
Tutti Frutti (Malt-O-Meal)	32 g	15 g	47%	3 mints
Golden Crisp	27 g	14 g	52 %	21 Altoids

Golden Crisp? Sounds like candy all by itself.

Finding Hidden Candy

I’ve been weighing candy and checking labels to prepare our “Find Hidden Candy” display at the USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington, D.C. Here are some of the surprises I’ve found:

Brand	Serving Size	Sugar per Serving	Percent Sugar	Candy Equivalent
Oatmeal Squares	58 g (1 cup)	10 g	17%	2 striped starlight mints
Last July Organic Chocolate Cookies	43 g (4 cookies)	12 g	28%	18 Altoids
Honey Maid honey graham crackers	31 g (2 full sheets)	8 g	26%	2 large wintergreen Life Savers
Kraft Original Barbecue Sauce	34 g (2 TBSP)	9 g	26%	1 Life Saver, 1 starlight mint

Graham crackers have as much sugar as chocolate cookies? I may as well eat wheat bread with honey instead. Or have my sugar for dessert.

Find Hidden Candy

How much "candy" is in the food you eat?

This 20 oz. bottle of orange soda contains 84 grams of sugar.  
Drinking the soda would be like eating all the candy on the scale.

Most candy is made from sugar, corn syrup, and flavorings.  These same ingredients are used to sweeten lots of different kinds of foods.
Can you find the "hidden candy" in other food you eat?

What you need:

• Sweet food with ingredient label, such as fruit-flavored drink, soda pop, fruit snacks, or yogurt
• Candy made mostly from sugar, such as mint Life Savers, Altoids, or Smarties
• Kitchen scale

What to do:

1. Check the label to find out how much sugar your sweet food contains.
2. Weigh candy on the kitchen scale until it matches the weight of the sugar.
3. Eating your sweet food would be like eating that much candy.

What you see:
Some snacks are really candy in disguise, such as fruit snacks made of corn syrup, sugar, flavorings, and gelatin--the same ingredients as gummy bears. 

Other popular foods have "hidden candy."  For instance, one fruit-flavored brand of yogurt has 28 grams extra sugar--as much as five mint Life Savers plus four Altoids.


From the book Candy Experiments by Loralee Leavitt

Please do not copy, sell, post, publish, or distribute all or any part of this material without the author's permission. Instead, feel free to link to this website, and to contact me with questions.