Refusing to buy certain cereals for my DC?

[Ricekrispie22]

Does anyone else refuse to buy Coco Pops, Krave, Cookie Crisp and such like for their DC on the principle that 11g of sugar (more than a Freddo) for breakfast is just wrong?

I buy all sorts. It's cereal. Not crack cocaine.

Sometimes ds choses weetabix or shreddies. Sometimes cocopops. Sometimes toast or fruit. As long as he eats something before school I don't give a shiney shite.

Dd hardly eats anything in a morning, so if she fancies a bowl of cocopops I am winning at parenting.

Dd is 14, a size 8, tall and skinny. Ds is almost 5, in age 5 to 6 with the waist pulled in a bit. He has chunked up a bit over summer but walking to big school everyday and running around will soon slim him down again.

I cook most other things from scratch. We have 2 outdoor hobbies/sports. We walk the dog at weekends, we are outside a lot. Dd eats a fuckton of veg and fruit as a vegetarian. Ds eats fruit but is a veg refuser unless I hide it, which I do.

If they were having cocopops for breakfast, mcdonalds for lunch and a kebab for tea I would worry. But it's about getting a balance.

Some of dds friends weren't allowed sweet stuff as small dcs. No sweets, no chocolate, no sugary cereals etc. Now they have access to their own money they are bingeing on them. Dd had a bit of chocolate if she fancies it. The rest of her money she saves for clothes or makeup.

Breakfasts in the Binary household seem to revolve around eggs or porridge it turns out...

Every weekend I make breakfast wraps and freeze them so on the mornings were busy etc, we can tust chuck them in the microwave to reheat. DH will wrap his in foil and take it to work as he's up afd out by 6.30

Or we'll have omelette, scrambled eggs etc as it take a few minutes

Or porridge. Because of budgets. 75p/kg is hard to beat! Although DS and DH will eat around 100g each if left to their own devices.

When we're feeling flush, we'll buy a treat cereal from aldi or somewhere I have frosties . DH will choose coco pops and DS normally goes for crunchy nut.

Nope we eat any cereals we fancy, there is everything from porridge to coco pops in the cupboard.

We haveva box of chocolate cereal that os only allowed on a weekend. Most days dd has weetabix, fruit andva slice of toast.

We only ever have cereals when we are on holiday.

I allow DD one bowl of chocolate cereal on a sat morning before her sport. Have done for the last 5 years (she's 12). She knows it's one bowl a week and never asks for it at any other time. Works for us.

Oh begging your pardon she is also allowed a bowl of it on her birthday and the first day of a new school year.

Some of dds friends weren't allowed sweet stuff as small dcs. No sweets, no chocolate, no sugary cereals etc. Now they have access to their own money they are bingeing on them

Oh this old mumsnet trope again. I must say it's not my experience at all. The kids I know who grew up eating healthily continue to eat healthily and the ones who grew up eating crap continue to eat crap.

Not that I think there's anything particularly wrong with the odd bowl of sugary cereal. But it's hardly 'necessary' in the interests balance. DS gets treats, but cereal (apart from the odd box of cornflakes) is just not something we buy.

For those asking about having time to make breakfast, it really doesn't take long. Walk into kitchen put pan of water on to poach eggs or eggs in pan with water to boil (ten mins... boiled obvs need timin, poached more flexible); in mean time make lunches / unload dishwasher /make coffee). For pp whose son eats bacon but not much else bacon and scrambled egg can be done easily in the microwave.

We have lots of cereals at home. Including coco pops and frosted shreddies. The kids choose what they want each morning. DD is 5 and doesn't like cereal so she usually has plain toast or soft boiled eggs. DS is 10 and likes cereal so sometimes will choose that, sometimes toast or bagel or just fruit and yoghurt. Both DC are healthy. Can't really get worked up about it, everything in moderation I think. If they do have something fairly high in sugar I just watch what they are eating for the rest of the day.

For those who like lucky charms but not the price, Asda sell a cereal called Marshmallow Mateys which tastes exactly the same and is usually £3 but sometimes on sale for £2 or £1.50. I like a bowl in the evening when we have it in.

“For those asking about having time to make breakfast, it really doesn't take long. Walk into kitchen put pan of water on to poach eggs or eggs in pan with water to boil (ten mins... boiled obvs need timin, poached more flexible); in mean time make lunches / unload dishwasher /make coffee). For pp whose son eats bacon but not much else bacon and scrambled egg can be done easily in the microwave.”

I can’t understand why people say things like this. Can you really not see how much more effort that is than pouring out cereal, or putting porridge in the microwave?

We have Weetabix, Porridge, Cheerios, Frosties and Muesli available in our house.

We occasionally get chocolate Weetabix - it's got chocolate chips in it though, the whole thing isn't chocolate.

Other than toast and the very occasional weekend fry up, I am NOT messing around cooking and pot washing loads at breakfast time!

We have weetabix, cheerios, muesli, porridge oats and crunchy nut cornflakes in the cupboard. DS1 normally has a bagel and scrambled eggs though and DS2 is going through a boiled eggs and soldiers phase.

Wholemeal toast is also available and we have porridge when I have bananas that need eating and a bacon and egg sandwich on a Sunday. I also make pancakes as a treat (and will look for a spinach pancakes recipe thanks to this thread) and the occasional omelette.

I like to set them for the day with a good breakfast, it tends to go down hill from there.

Ds would only eat leave for breakfast for years so no I don’t refuse . Now at high school has a more varied diet .

Was it the ideal breakfast no . Was it better than nothing . Yes.

If you don’t want to buy it don’t . That’s the choices we make

@glintandglide yes it is more effort... am just saying it doesn't have to take hours or use loads of pans!

I justify the odd box of sugar puffs as no worse than orange juice

There’s nothing wrong with sugar puffs sometimes. But...no worse than OJ? Really ?

Tbph it’s comments like that make me realise why such a lot of work on education around food is needed. There are such a lot of bad and plain wrong messages out there such as ‘all sugar is equal’, like this. It’s really, really not.

I’ve started buying the alphabites cereal by the bear yoyo brand. Ones in chocolate or plain. Kids say it tastes like Cheerios except there’s no added sugar.

I'm all for being lazy at breakfast. If there are leftovers from the previous day, fair game. Sometimes I make up egg mayo the night before. Having certain foods for breakfast is a social construct and I find that a sugar rush at dawn means I eat worse for the rest of the day.

Well I'm in the minority because I do buy them we currently have around 6 boxes of cereal which includes blueberry shredded wheats, Aldi's coco pops, chocolate pillows, porridge, weetabix and cookie crisp. Dd usually picks porridge or scrambled eggs but if she picks some of the devils sugery offerings so be it. Her weight is fine and her teeth are perfect. May the goddess of good mothering strike me down this morning dd had both chocolate pillows and some coco pops in same bowl 😂😂

Homemade wholemeal toast and eggs with fruit at primary age on a school day, Porridge, homemade muesli or Greek yoghurt and fruit. At Christmas the kids get to choose a box of cereal each, this was something we did in the 80s too - my brother actually chose Special K each year 😆. My health visitor was gobsmacked when she realised (after having to do a food diary for youngest) and said she doubted she knew of any more than three other families in her whole district that would maybe bother with a cooked meal before school. I like knowing they've had a good brain-and-body boost before being out of the house for hours that's all.

We only buy cornflakes, weetabix or rice krispies. It's that or porridge for breakfast!

So many porridge eaters - just can't, it's like re-eating your own sick.

Where are all the Nutella eaters? I know you are out there. We don't eat breakfast during the week, just coffee (teens), at the weekend we have white toast, with Nutella - Yum.

Also anyone, like me, eat cereal all their young lives, in the 60's and 70's, adding a couple of desertful spoons of sugar to the full fat milk, every day. Come home from school and drink a pint of full fat milk straight from the bottle along with a jam donut. I wasn't fat, and I didn't know anyone who was.

It's only a bowl of cereal. It's only a drink of juice. It's only a small bag of sweets. It's only......

And all those "onlys" are why this country is facing an obesity epidemic.

Bran flakes, porridge, weetabix.

Oh for goodness sake the country isn’t facing an obesity epidemic. It’s been in one for 15 years. Children are actually less obese now than the late 2000s. Such a drama llama thing to say

We don’t eat cereal at all. It’s actually pretty horrible tasting to me, not a treat.

We have porridge, eggs, fruit, yoghurt, muesli (not granola, too sweet), beans on toast. Very occasionally buckwheat pancakes at the weekend or a fry up, or croissants/pains aux chocolat.

Cereal is nutritionally rubbish and doesn’t keep me or my children going until lunchtime. Might as well have a bar of chocolate and a vitamin tablet.

Manufacturers have convinced people that cereal is a healthy meal when it is just a load of cheap carbs, processed so that all of the original goodness in the ingredients is removed and has to be artificially put back. The artificial vitamins aren’t as bio avaialble as vitamins in unprocessed food.

None of this would matter to me as an occasional treat if I thought it tasted nice, but I don’t. Luckily the kids aren’t bothered either.