Welcome back to my autism-aware shopping trip through the grocery store. Week by week, I'm showing you what the store sells, prune down the selection to what's safe for me (because autistic people can have very sensitive systems) and point out various gotchas the store tries to make you buy stuff you didn't come for.
As a reminder, I shop with the following conditions in mind:
- dairy-free
- low sugar
- avoid ultraprocessed junk
- avoid food coloring
- conditional vegetarianism
- avoid high histamine foods
- awareness of gluten-free options and sugar-free options
Last time I got severely unhappy and crushingly disappointed about the heartless manipulation involved with the alcohol aisle, which is why this post is nearly a month later. We also learned that there's basically no diet pop in the pop aisle that's good. The one exception is
Zevia, which is sweetened with stevia leaf and typically contains no artificial colors or other additives.
The caveat for drinking it is that a lot of pop's allure literally comes from feeding your sugar addiction. So when you drink Zevia, you may find yourself feeling rather unsatisfied despite the clear sweetness and flavor of the drink. If that's the case, now you know why: it's because it was never about the drink, and always about the sugar.
Anyway, me being crabbity aside, it's time to move on to the breakfast aisle!
By and large, this aisle is cereal on one side, and refrigerated et cetera on the other. We'll start with the cereal.
Hey, remember how I've been complaining in weeks past about snack foods? At the start of this aisle, we have both the bulk bags and the snack sized cereals! One hideous-for-the-environment plastic bowl plus a serving of cereal. Just add your milk of choice and a spoon, and you're good. I've bought a couple of these recently when I was craving a particular cereal and didn't anticipate wanting more of it but it's really not an ethical choice.
After the snack-sized things we get into the full array. The picture basically goes almost to the end of the aisle, and it's roughly grouped by manufacturer. I'm not sure why Post cereals are here at the head of the line, but presumably it has something to do with their popularity or the amount of money paid to be displayed first.
Before we dive into a deeper look at everything here, it's important to note that all these brightly colored cereals (like the marshmallow bits, fruit colors, and anything that turns milk a color when you're eating it), is made with artificial colors.
I had one mother of an autistic boy comment that she'd swear "the color red, in food" was the cause of some of her kid's aggression behaviors. Which is entirely possible, because food coloring can be made in a lot of different ways, and isn't rigorously tested on humans.
If you've been wondering why I haven't gone on a rant about sugar in cereal, well... Congrats, you've been paying attention.
My pictures aren't the best here so I'll summarize the important stuff. We're starting with some obviously terrible cereals. Really, no one should reasonably look at either of these cereals and assume they're healthy. For one cup of cereal, these will cost you 12 grams of sugar. That's most of your daily sugar budget, right there. And it's added sugar, by the way, so literally sugar mixed into it and also sprayed onto it after it was processed. Sugar bomb!
That's for one cup of cereal. Does that sound reasonable to you? Let's see, shall we?
This is my cereal bowl. It's a medium bowl, used for soup or salads or cereal as needed. It's neither particularly large nor small.
Now we'll measure out a cup of our dessert cereal of choice, who I won't give free advertising to by naming. This seems fine so far, right? Let's put the cereal in the bowl.
Seems all right. Maybe a bit small of a serving. Is this about how much you'd usually put in the bowl? It isn't for me, so let's fill up the bowl properly.
Here we are. This is about how much cereal I'd typically put in this bowl. Doesn't look like that much more, visually, really.
But when we pull it back out and measure it... it's over two cups. More than twice the recommended serving. And it barely looks different to me. This is a very rough demonstration of how this works, and I'm sure most people would only err by half a cup, given a similar bowl. But you see what I mean now, when I say that serving sizes are tricky.
To avoid making this mistake, you'd have to measure out your cereal every time. How many people do that, do you think?
But maybe Post is particularly terrible in terms of sugar? Let's keep going down the aisle... The calorie counts vary, but it's the same deal here: 12 grams of sugar for a cup. Again, these are dessert cereals, marketed as children's cereal. As if you graduate from your sugar dependency at age 15 or something and after that only eat boring adult cereal. (As an adult of over 30, I can safely say adults still eat dessert/"kids" cereal all the time.)
So the dessert cereals were clearly morally bankrupt sugar bombs. Are they all like that? Let's look a bit further, past the obviously bad stuff. Frosted flakes are frosted, which is bad, but corn flakes are good for you, right?
Wellllll, no, turns out these are pretty much just dessert cereal. 14 grams of sugar for one cup of cereal. No dice here.
What about Life? Not so much bright packaging and colorful cartoon characters aimed at kids that don't necessarily know better than to stuff sugar down their throats... but let's see the data. 10 grams of sugar per cup for the cinnamon flavor, and 8 for the original. This is better, but really, not much. I'd still classify this as a dessert cereal, in all honesty. Disappointing.
Maybe Raisin Bran? That's healthy, right? Raisins and toasted bran flakes should be nutritious.
Emphasis on should, here. This is actually the worst offender so far, at 17 grams of sugar per cup. Why? Well, not only has the cereal been sweetened, but also, raisins are dried fruit, which is like candy with fiber. For added sugar, this is only 9 grams, which is the best so far... but it's still far too much to start your day with. Or include in your day at all, really. Sugar bomb!
Here's a better option. While the calorie count is still frustratingly high, at 150+ calories per cup, the sugar is 3-4 grams per cup. It's all added sugar, which is bad, but the levels are low enough that even if you doubled it, it's not going max out your sugar budget all at once.
That said, this is still ultra-processed grains, meaning it's best to avoid it. Also, definitely do not make the muddy buddies recipe they're advertising on the front there, because that pretty much just adds sugar and more sugar.
Our best contender so far. Marketed as healthy, which... it's still ultra-processed grains and 140 calories per cup serving, but at 2 grams of sugar, it's the clear winner so far. Mind you, this is only the basic version. If you opt for frosted variants all bets are off.
I've heard this brand described as "sweetened cardboard" in the past. I'm not really sure what it tastes like now, but the packaging at least seems attractive. Can't say the same for the nutrition, though. Serving size is 3/4 of a cup, not even a full cup, and it has the highest calorie count so far at 200+. Add in the 10-12 grams of sugar and it's pretty clear. I won't be trying these anytime soon.
Last but not least in the cereal aisle, possibly the best available choice. If you can manage your portion sizing anyway. Grape Nuts are exceptionally dense, compared to the air-puffed competition all around them. The serving size is half a cup, which is the smallest yet, and it'll cost you 5 grams of sugar and 200 calories.
Why am I still recommending this when a previous cereal was fewer calories and fewer sugar carbs? Two reasons.
First, Grape Nuts might have more sugar overall, but not a single gram of that is added. The sweetness of this cereal is built into its ingredients, not from spoonfuls of sugar sprinkled on top for palatability.
Second, remember how everything so far has been ultra-processed? This isn't. It's largely whole grain. As such, it's much kinder to your digestive tract than anything else I've showcased.
There's one more thing to say about cereal before we look at the rest of this aisle, and it's that Grape Nuts are not, in fact, your very best cereal option.
This is more or less in the style of Grape Nuts, but instead of merely wheat products, it's opted for a mix of grains and legumes. The end result has a better spread of nutrients and fibers.
The other reason this is better than Grape Nuts? Check the sugar. This is made of sprouted grains, meaning the literal grain seeds were processed after the plant sprouted. This uses up the sugar stored in the grain, and thus you have a cereal with no sugar content at all. I like throwing fresh fruit or nondairy yogurt with some local honey or something on top to add some sweetness and extra textures, but it's not really necessary to enjoy this cereal.
So cereal is sugar bombs, with very few exceptions. Moving on to the rest of the breakfast aisle! We begin with a short section of bagged granola. You'll note many of the same brands from the granola bars section a few aisles over. And pretty much the same failings as those granola bars. It's allllll sugar bombs.
Next there's oatmeal. All kinds of oatmeal. There's quick oats and rolled oats and steel cut oats and old fashioned oats. I honestly couldn't tell you what most of that means, but I can safely say that the instant you add flavorings to it (see the convenience boxes right next to the tubes?) it becomes sugar bombs. You may even have convenience/snack sugar bombs, as seen in the upper right side there.
Do note the gluten-free quick oats, at least. You can actually find unsweetened gluten-free oats at Trader Joe's, but in a pinch these will do.
Remember how there were baking mixes back in the baking aisle? Including pancake mixes? Well, here's more. I'm beginning to realize Meijer uses some of their staggering amounts of shelf space by doing redundant sections. You could walk to the baking aisle, or you could just stop here for breakfast-specific baking mixes.
Including, of course, snack-sized containers that you just add water to and then heat in a frying pan. Because of course those exist.
Also pictured here: liquid sugar to pour on your already unhealthy pancakes/flapjacks. Seriously, pancakes really don't have a lot going for them nutritionally. You can mix in nuts or fruit or what-have-you, but the basic recipe is ultraprocessed grain, dairy, oil, and some salt and sugar. Douse it in liquid sugar and you have a pretty unrepentantly unhealthy meal.
I'll spare you the rant about maple syrup and how most things calling themselves maple syrup aren't even close to 100% actual maple syrup. Just read your labels carefully.
And finally, speaking of unrepentant things! At the end of the cereal side is sugar bombs! I mean Pop-Tarts. And knockoffs. Nobody pretends these are healthy, right? They're ultraprocessed white flour layered around sugary filling and typically glazed with even more sugar. This is a dessert, not a breakfast.
Turning around to the other side of the aisle now, we start with something that's pretty appropriate for the sugerbomb state of the cereal aisle: Cool Whip. It's like whipped cream, only in a tub and even worse for you. It is accompanied by frozen fruit. I'm not really sure why it's here, because the ice cream is on the other side of the freezer units. I guess maybe people use frozen fruit and Cool Whip together frequently?
When I was growing up, I feel like you could mainly find blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries in frozen form. Maybe cherries and blackberries. Now there's mango and banana and peach and kiwi and pineapple and various mixes of all of these, because frozen fruit is exceptionally handy for making smoothies. Smoothies are all the rage in healthy eating, or at least they used to be a few years ago.
So hey, remember how pancakes aren't a very good breakfast? Neither are waffles. Especially when they have little bits of sugar stuffed into them, Eggo. Do note the gluten-free option, called Vans, there. That's something.
After the basic breakfast options/traps we start to move into more complex convenience foods, like sausages and single-serve breakfast sandwiches. I'm not 100% sure why the burritos are here too, unless they're specifically breakfast burritos.
And after that we leave breakfast behind. This is all bagged chicken products, baked, fried, breaded, and ground into a paste and turned in to nuggets, it's all here.
Shoutout to Applegate Farms at the top there, with the only humane chicken in the entire section. Their internal standards are on par with Certified Humane's, so I'll typically eat their products. Also, they produce gluten-free chicken nuggets that are quite good. I couldn't tell I was eating a gluten-free product when I tried them.
After chicken, it's on to fish. Filets, sticks, shapes, sandwich patties... This is actually only a small part of the seafood section, but it was here, so here it is.
This frozen section cuts off somewhat abruptly here to turn into these large, open coolers. The contents of these changes seasonally, and based on whatever's in demand. At the time I took these photos, it was just about Thanksgiving. So while you typically can't find pork chitterlings, here they are in force.
And, since I mentioned Thanksgiving... you knew this was coming. Turkeys.
So many turkeys. The little ones on the right are Butterball, which surprisingly adheres to the American Humane standard. That's my third choice in independent humane standards, not nearly as stringent as the first two. But it's something, and so if I'm desperate for turkey and can't find local to buy, I typically grab these.
So this week we discovered that cereal is, by and large, ultra-processed sugerbombs and propaganda. There continue to be multiple snack sections in every aisle of this supermarket, and sugarbombs infecting even otherwise healthy things like oatmeal and loose granola.
Next time we'll either finish off the frozen section or dive into the meat and deli areas. These last few posts will be tricky because it's getting harder and harder to avoid getting other people in my pictures, and also the floor plan for the meat and fresh fruits/veggies section is significantly less streamlined. On purpose, I think. Regardless, we're on the home stretch now.
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