Blog for all health-conscious: Fooducate Blog - Kraft Belvita. A Healthy Cookie to Start the Day?

Monday 21 May 2012

Fooducate Blog - Kraft Belvita. A Healthy Cookie to Start the Day?

Kraft Belvita. A Healthy Cookie to Start the Day?

Posted: 21 May 2012 04:43 AM PDT

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Kraft is touting its new Belvita line of breakfast cookies as “Nutritious Sustained Energy.” It boasts 20 grams of whole grain too. Should you be eating this instead of your favorite cereal / cereal bar?

What you need to know:

A serving is one pack of 4 cookies and will set you back 230 calories. (A breakfast cereal is usually 120 calories before milk, 170 with milk). It’s got the equivalent of 3 teaspoons of sugar (less than 1 tsp per cookie). At 3 grams, fiber isn’t a big feature here. Most of the nutrients are tacked on as fortifications.

Here is the ingredient list:

Whole Grain Wheat Flour, Enriched Flour [Wheat Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate (Vitamin B1), Riboflavin (Vitamin B2), Folic Acid], Sugar, High Oleic Canola Oil, Whole Grain Rolled Oats, Whole Grain Rye Flour, Dried Apples, Baking Soda, Disodium Pyrophosphate, Salt, Soy Lecithin, Datem, Caramel Color, Cinnamon, Natural Flavor, Ferric Orthophosphate (Iron), Niacinamide, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B6), Riboflavin (Vitamin B2), Thiamin Mononitrate (Vitamin B1).

As you can see, this is not 100% whole grain product. In fact, the second ingredient is enriched flour. That’s why Kraft is adding whole grain roll oats and whole grain rye flour to the mix. But despite these efforts, only 3 grams of fiber in here. Sugar is the third ingredient in the list, followed by a large amount of oil, which contributes to the 8 grams of fat in this product.

Hey – it’s a cookie. Cookies are made of flour sugar and fat…so what do you expect.

But why eat a cookie for breakfast? Where exactly is the sustainable energy coming from?

What to do at the supermarket:

Relegate cookies and bars to the snack part of your day. It’s much better to have some real food for breakfast than a processed bar or cookie. Might we suggest – a slice of whole grain toast (90 calories), peanut butter (1 tbsp = 90 calories) topped with slices from a half a banana (60 calories).

However, as cookies go, this is probably one of the better choices.

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