Thread: 7 Worst Supermarket Breakfasts

7 Worst Supermarket Breakfasts

By David Zinczenko with Matt Goulding



Want to lose dozens of pounds, save hundreds of dollars, and look and feel your best forever? Great! All you need is the same thing that President Obama, the Jolie/Pitts, Moammar Gadhafi, and Vincent Chase all have: An entourage.


Seriously. There are 50,000 products in your average supermarket, and unless you’re swooping through the aisles with a math whiz (to calculate what the real calorie counts are), a dietician (to explain what all those crazy words on the ingredients list mean), and a marketing expert (to decode phrases like “all natural” and “heart healthy”), chances are you’re going to make a few mistakes. Make the same mistake over and over, and you could be shelling out extra money and gaining extra pounds.

And for those of us who don’t have such an entourage, most of our at-home nutritional mistakes start with breakfast. The Food Channel recently conducted a survey that found that two-thirds of us eat breakfast at home, which means that the choices we make at the supermarket today will determine how we start tomorrow. So until your career as a politician/movie star/Middle East dictator takes off, consider Eat This, Not That! as your team of experts. We’ve already crunched the numbers. All you need to do is crunch the delicious food!




#7: WORST HOT CEREAL

Nature's Path Organic Instant Hot Oatmeal, Apple Cinnamon (1 packet)
210 calories
2.5 g fat (0 g saturated)
14 g sugar


Nature's Path attributes its sweetness to "organic evaporated cane juice." Translation: sugar. Each packet in the box contains as much sugar as a scoop of Edy's Espresso Chip ice cream. We commend the 4 grams of fiber, but you shouldn't have to take in a dessert's load of candy sweetness to get it. Switch to Kashi GoLean Instant Hot Cereal instead. You get more fiber (7 grams), and you cut your sugar load by more than half.


Eat This Instead!
Kashi GoLean Instant Hot Cereal, Truly Vanilla (1 packet)
150 calories
2 g fat
6 g sugar




#6: WORST BREAKFAST MEAT

Banquet Brown ‘N Serve Maple Sausage Links (3 links)
210 calories
19 g fat (6 g saturated)
520 mg sodium


This truly is the weakest link. Three measly logs of sausage aren't are going to do much for your appetite, but they are going to stuff your belly with 19 grams of animal fat. Add that to your daily breakfast and you'll gain 22 pounds in a year. Switch to the turkey version and you'll cut your calories by nearly half, plus take in less fat, saturated fat, and sodium.


Eat This Instead!
Banquet Brown ‘N Serve Turkey Sausage Links (3 links)
110 calories
7 g fat (2 g saturated)
390 mg sodium




#5: WORST CEREAL

General Mills Oatmeal Crisp Hearty Raisin (1 cup)
240 calories
2.5 g fat (0.5 saturated)
20 g sugar


Oatmeal Crisp . . . it certainly sounds healthy, right? But upon closer inspection, this may actually be the most deceptive item on this entire list. It offers no frosting or marshmallows, yet it still manages to pack in more sugar than either Lucky Charms or Frosted Flakes. For a good bowl, look no further than Kashi’s GoLean, which meets the same nutritional standard as Kashi's oatmeal. Each bowl comes with 13 grams of protein and 10 grams of fiber—exceptional numbers by cereal standards.



Eat This Instead!
Kashi GoLean (1 cup)
140 calories
1 g fat (0 g saturated)
6 g sugar




#4: WORST WAFFLE
Nature's Path Homestyle Frozen Waffles (2 waffles)
270 calories
10 g fat (1.5 g saturated)
5 g sugar
2 g fiber


When it comes to frozen waffles, it's what you serve on top and on the side that typically makes it a healthy breakfast. Think fruit, eggs, or ham, all of which make supreme waffle pairings. With that in mind, you don't want to burn up too many calories on the waffles alone. Nature's Path makes some decent options, but this isn't one of them. It's loaded down with dubious ingredients like soybean oil and potato starch. The better option is Van’s Lite Waffles. They cut the calories by nearly half and offer three times as much hunger-fighting fiber.



Eat This Instead!
Van’s Natural Foods Lite Waffles (2 waffles)
140 calories
2 g fat
4 g sugar
6 g fiber




#3: WORST TOASTER PASTRY

Kellogg’s Pop-Tarts, Frosted Chocolate Chip flavor (2 pastries)
420 calories
12 g fat (4 g saturated)
34 g sugar


Since when has it been acceptable to eat chocolate-frosted pastries at breakfast? And yet, Pop-Tarts keeps coming out with new dessert-like options, destined to further inflame America's flab crises. Kellog's tries to claim that one serving is one pastry, yet there are two in each pack. That's more than 400 dessert-like calories before you start the day. Essentially you end up with zero fiber, a negligible amount of protein, and more sugar than you'd find in a Snickers bar. Special K’s Fruit Crisps provide you with the same ease and convenience, but for less than a quarter of the calories of a Pop-Tart.


Eat This Instead!
Special K Fruit Crisps Blueberry flavor (2 crisps)
100 calories
2 g fat (1 g saturated)
7 g sugar




#2: WORST BREAKFAST SANDWICH

Jimmy Dean’s Sausage, Egg & Cheese Biscuit Sandwiches (1 sandwich)
440 calories
31 g fat (11 g saturated, 3 g trans)
850 mg sodium


This is an instance where you'd be better off ordering your breakfast sandwich from a drive-thru window. In fact, Jimmy Dean’s Sausage, Egg & Cheese Biscuit packs in as much fat as 2.5 McDonald’s Egg McMuffin sandwiches! But equally bad here is that glut of trans fat smooshed into this biscuit. Many food processors have begun scaling back the dangerous trans fats. We advise Jimmy to do the same.


Eat This Instead!
Jimmy Dean D-Lights Canadian Bacon Honey Wheat Muffin
230 calories
4.5 g fat (3 g saturated)
760 mg sodium




#1: WORST BREAKFAST BOWL

Jimmy Dean Breakfast Bowls: Pancakes and Syrup and Sausage Links (1 bowl)
710 calories
34 g fat (12 g saturated)
35 g sugar
1,000 mg sodium


It should come as no surprise that the top two breakfast offenders come from the king of sausage. This bowl surpasses the other items on this list in every category: calories, fat, saturated fat, sugar, and sodium. You would have to bike roughly 17 miles to burn off just one of these breakfasts. Most of Jimmy Dean's breakfast can at least back their calories with a substantial amount of protein, but this bowl has a paltry 12 grams. The Smart Ones breakfast below manages to squeeze in 15 grams, and it does it with 500 fewer calories!


Eat This Instead!
Smart Ones Morning Express Cheesy Scramble with Hashbrowns (1 package)
210 calories
9 g fat (4 g saturated)
1 g sugar
510 mg sodium

Originally Posted by Arra

Diabetes is actually more rampant in China and India.
Also, most reports saying that x out of y are obese rely on Body Mass Index, which is rather crap, seeing as you don't take into account bodyfat. The BVI would probably clear out some of the false negatives.

I should have been more specific. Type 2 DM and Obesity (based on body fat measurements) plague the area that I live and work in. Sad, but I see it everyday and when you have "non-compliant" patients, then the problem never gets fixed and those bad habits get passed down to their kids.

I'm not going to get into what I do for a living, but in regards to health concerns, these two ARE important for my area.