Tuesday, June 1, 2010 at 07:02 AM
Welcome to Trade-Up Tuesday! Every Tuesday, here on A Better Bag of Groceries, I tell you about a Trade-Up I’ve made since learning about NuVal and I give away free stuff. Today, I’m giving away some foods that I am relying on these days for energy and stamina: Nature’s Path Cereal and Larabars!
I have to admit – I am freaking out just a bit now that it’s June 1st. My June is going to be busier than ever. I get twitchy just thinking about it. Every area of my life is going into overdrive:
- Work: new retailers coming on board, business trips on the agenda.
- Kids: Can there be any more end-of-the-school-year activities??? School play, concert, dance recital, teacher gifts, pre-school graduation, children singing in church, yada, yada, yada.
- Fitness: Teaching a new boot camp beginning mid-June. Just call me Jillian!
- Home: This is the part that is really making me twitchy. Major changes going on at our home. Yikes!
So, with my agenda overflowing, it was time to stock up on some foods that are easily accessible, low-maintenance and chock full of energy.
First, I decided it was time for a new cereal. I am a total floozie when it comes to cereal. By that, I mean I am all into a cereal for a given period of time. I can’t get enough of one particular brand – every day – yum, yum, yum and then (boom!) I’m over it. So it was with the stale box of Shredded Wheat that I have collecting dust in my cupboard right now. I know it is a Rock Star on the NuVal scale. It gets a 91for crying out loud. But, alas, it is just not doing it for me. So, I found myself in the Healthy section of my grocery store last Friday eyeing the Nature’s Path selections. Hmmmmmmm. Flax, Omega 3. I figured it would get a great NuVal Score.
I brought home a box of the Flax Plus MultiBran, loaded it with Strawberries (100) and Blueberries (100) and topped it with skim milk (91).
As my friend Tina would say, Holy Yum! I am so loving this new cereal. It was just the new something that I needed to face this crazy month I have ahead of me. Quick easy energy. I spent part of Memorial Day checking out the NuVal scores on this cereal. It gets a 38. OK, I was a little disappointed. I mean, it’s still better than the average score for cold cereal (27), but I was expecting it to be higher. Oh, well! It is delicious!
As I said, the month ahead is so daunting that I know it will be critical to have some quick and easy nutrition ready to go when the going gets rough. And that’s were the LaraBars come in. Fooducate, one of my favorite food blogs, had a great post recently about LaraBars. The amazing thing about them is how short the ingredients list is. For example, on this LaraBar Apple Pie, the ingredients are: Dates,
Almonds, Unsweetened Apples, Walnuts, Raisins and Cinnamon. On the Peanut Butter Cookie (my favorite!), they are Dates, Peanuts and Salt. Nice and simple.
The NuVal scores are:
- LaraBar Apple Pie: 57
- LaraBar Peanut Butter Cookie: 29
LaraBars are definitely one of my favorite new discoveries of the past six months. Oh, how I love them!
Today’s GiveAway
One lucky commenter will win a box of Nature’s Path cereal, a Larabar Apple Pie, a Larabar Peanut Butter cookie and a NuVal t-shirt. Wow! Great prize! Just leave a comment below telling me one of the following:
- A food that you rely on for energy and stamina when your life goes into overdrive OR
- A trade-up you’ve made since learning about NuVal
I’ll choose one winner at 7 am Eastern time Wednesday. Good luck to everyone!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Cereal for Grown-Ups, Trade-Up Tuesday
Tags: LaraBars, Natures Path
Tuesday, May 25, 2010 at 06:54 AM
Welcome to Trade-Up Tuesday! Every Tuesday, here on A Better Bag of Groceries, I talk about a Trade-Up I’ve made since learning about NuVal and I give away something for free. Today’s Topic: The Best of the Cereal Category.
I love it when magazines have their “Best of” lists. Every summer, you will find me on the beach with my nose deep into the Best of Boston from Boston magazine or the Best of Rhode Island from Rhode Island Monthly.
As the weather gets warmer, my household becomes All Cereal for breakfast. We put away the oatmeal and while there is an occasional toasted item first thing in the morning, it is more likely to see four bowls and a glass bottle of our favorite milk at the breakfast table.
People ask me about NuVal scores for cereal often and so today, I am giving away the most notable high-scoring items in the Children’s Cereal category and the Adult Cereal category (that sounds a little risque, doesn’t it?)
If you have kids, there is almost nothing better than a box of Cheerios. Cheerios score a 34 on the NuVal scale. There is a Cinnamon Toast Crunch with 75% reduced sugar that scores a 40, however, I’ve yet to find it here in New England. My kids are big Rice Chex fans. I think my husband feels good knowing that he is giving them cereal that does not have a cartoon character on the front of the box, but Rice Chex pale in comparison to Cheerios. They only score a 24. In fact a LOT of kids cereals score in the 20-24 range. My advice? Try to keep the favorite finger food of most toddlers on your table for as long as you can. The score is better than the rest.
Now, when it comes to adults, the Rock Star Cereal that we at NuVal often mention is Post Shredded Wheat. It was a standout early on when we began scoring the cereal category. It gets an amazing 91! There are other cereals that score a 91 as well, including Barbara’s Shredded Wheat, Arrowhead Mills Organic Amaranth Flakes, Price Chopper Puffed Wheat, Meijer Shredded Wheat, and Bear Naked Fit Triple Berry Crunch. The cool thing about NuVal, is that when grocery stores put the scores on their shelves, you can easily see when a store brand gets the same or better score than the National Brand – and it’s usually cheaper.
So, these days, we do have both Cheerios and Shredded Wheat on the morning menu, usually topped with banana (91) , blueberries (100), or strawberries (100). Sometimes, I even top with nectarine (93). Yum!
Today’s Giveaway
One lucky commenter will win a box of Shredded Wheat and a box of Cheerios. Sorry, I can’t send the skim milk through the mail! Just leave a comment below telling me your favorite cereal. (No worries if it’s not nutritious!) I’ll choose one commenter at 7 am EDT on Wednesday so check back to see if you are the lucky recipient! Good Luck!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Cereal for Grown-Ups, Cereal for Kids, Trade-Up Tuesday
Tags: cereal
Monday, December 14, 2009 at 09:54 AM
When I started blogging, back in July of 2009, one of my first posts was about Cereal for Grown-Ups. I wrote about it because one of the most frequently asked questions I get, once people learn that I work for NuVal, is about cereal and how it scores. People want to know about Kashi, Shredded Wheat, and other popular brands of cereal that adults tend to eat. This is true for kids’ cereals too. A lot of moms ask me about brands that they choose for their children, most notably Cheerios, Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Kix. Let’s face it, most of us mothers start out by feeding our kids Cheerios but by the time the kids are 5 and they are walking the grocery store with us and they are beginning to read words (like Lucky Charms!) they start asking for more than just plain old Cheerios. Add one of their favorite movie characters to the front of a box of cereal and it’s Meltdown In Aisle Five.
So, yes, I admit. We’ve been experimenting in the cereal department. In our cabinet right now are the following brands:
- Frosted Flakes
- Golden Grahams
- Cheerios
- Shredded Wheat (mine)
- Cinnnamon Toast Crunch
- Honey Nut Cheerios
I can tell you that the Golden Grahams and Cinnamon Toast Crunch made it into the basket because they had Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs characters on them. I have no idea how the Frosted Flakes made it into our cart and then into our cabinet. No idea. Perhaps one of my kids threw it in when I wasn’t looking? No idea.
Last week, my son had a half-day of school, so I brought him along on a Price Chopper visit that I had scheduled. We met up with my new colleague, Tina, to walk the store, to see some scores on the shelf and to try out some tools that we’ve developed at NuVal for teaching store employees about the system. I gave my son a Scavenger Hunt to do. He had to write down his favorite cereal and then go find it on the shelf to see what the score was. What did he pick? Frosted Flakes, of course. He found it on the shelf and wrote down the NuVal score: 24. Then I told him that he could go find another cereal that scored better than Frosted Flakes and that we would buy it. He was so excited about this little game. He is so used to being at our local grocery store with me (where they do not have NuVal), asking me to buy sugary, colorful cereals and getting the big NO. It was his big chance to show me that those Kid Magnet cereals really were healthy, Mom!
So, my son quickly found Lucky Charms (nope, NuVal score of 23), Fruity Pebbles (uh uh, NuVal score of 24), Apple Jacks (no, sigh, NuVal score of 24), and Cap’n Crunch (no, no, no, NuVal score of 10). My poor son! He was so deflated! It reminded me of A Christmas Story, when Ralphie so deperately wants a Red Ryder BB Gun, but everyone, including Santa keeps shooting him down. ‘You’ll shoot your eye out kid.”
Finally, my son found a colorful cereal that had a NuVal score better than that of Frosted Flakes: Fruity Cheerios. NuVal Score: 28.
Notice that he does not look overjoyed. It wasn’t that exciting. Fruity Cheerios have been resident in our cereal cupboard in the past. However, it was cool to see my son empowered with the NuVal scores to choose his own cereal – as long as it was above a certain number. In case you’re curious, Cereal scores range from 4 – 100 on the NuVal score, but the median score (half are above it, half are below it) is a 25.
Last week General Mills announced that it will be reducing the sugar levels in its cereals marketed to children. That’s great news. After the reformulations, NuVal will rescore those cereals and I will be sure to blog with an update.
On a bright note, the kids have been asking for Fruity Cheerios as a snack. The good news is that they’re munching on a little baggie of O’s which score a 28 while watching PBS Kids. Hey, it’s better than Cheetos. The bad news is that they have very sticky hands. This week, I’ll be sure to throw more hand wipes in my cart!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Cereal for Grown-Ups, Cereal for Kids, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Kashi, Kix
Tuesday, August 4, 2009 at 10:36 AM
Have you looked at the cereal aisle in your grocery store lately? It is huge. Absolutely humongous. And although there are many, many cereals to choose from, one of the most frequently asked questions I get when a friend or acquaintance learns that I work for NuVal is, “What about Kashi?”
Great question. I admit, I had a Kashi addiction circa 1996. I loved Good Friends. Loved it. It was life B.C. (Before Children). I was getting ready to be a bride, counted Weight Watchers Points obsessively, only had my own health and nutrition to worry about, had time and stamina for twice-daily workouts. When Weight Watchers added fiber to its little Points system slide rule (B.C. indeed!), I found that I could eat a really big bowl of Good Friends for breakfast. And I did – like, every day. My fiance (now dear husband) had many affectionate terms for the different Kashi cereal products, including Sticks, Twigs, and my all-time favorite, Compost. As life got much busier with two small children, I no longer had time for all that crunching, and we moved on to smaller bowls of something else.
So, when I’m asked about Kashi, my answer is that there are some Kashi cereal products that score really well and some that do not. Check out these scores:
Kashi 7 Whole Grain Cereal Puffs 91
Kashi GoLean High Protein and High Fiber Cereal 47
Kashi Go Lean Crunch 33
Kashi 7 Whole Grain Flakes 29
Kashi Good Friends 26
Kashi Strawberry Fields 11
Good or bad? Well the median NuVal score for cereal is 25 and scores range from 4 – 100. Cheerios get a 34. You think you’re doing a really healthy thing by eating Kashi Go Lean Crunch, but you could be just as healthy eating Cheerios.
If you didn’t know the NuVal scores, you might think you’re doing a really healthy thing by eating Kashi Strawberry Fields, which scores an 11. Just know you’re in the Capn’ Crunch range. It gets a 10.
My DH and I have a marathoner friend who has become a huge fan of NuVal and is living it. He’s a great athlete who posts Lance-Armstrong-like times, including 3:02 in Boston this year, when he runs. He chooses the best scoring products in each category whenever he can. These days he’s eating Post Shredded Wheat which scores a 91. He gets up really early to run and then chew through that.
As for what the adults in our household are crunching through these days: Kellogg’s Special K Protein Plus which scores a 60. That is much higher than regular Special K, which scores a 20. And it goes down easy.
Yes, there are a lot of sticks, twigs, composts and cereals. And a lot more stories to post, including those about kids’ cereals. Stay tuned.
For these and other cereal scores, check out http://www.nuval.com/Pages/ScoreCereal.aspx.
And check out this great interview with our own Dr. David Katz, the visionary behind the NuVal system, at http://bigthink.com/davidkatz/david-l-katz-a-food-system-for-dummies
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Cereal for Grown-Ups, Kashi, Special K
