nay. Cold cereal is not real food.

 

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Nay. I occasionally gave ds Heritage Os (spelt, I think?) as a snack when he was younger. Now that he is almost a year he has Veggie Booty, TLC crackers or Annie's Whole Wheat Bunnies as a snack instead.

 

So besides wheat, what else do you guys avoid in a cereal? And for how long? I'd like something like this as a finger food, but I'm unsure about the whole grain thing.

 

We gave cheerios to our first before I knew better

but our 2nd got veggie puffs and w/ our third (whose not ready for food yet) we'll get the organic o's cereal. I really am alot more aware and food smart now, than when we had our first. And MDC has done alot for my knowledge of whats best also. Thanks Guys

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We do the Herritage O's every now and again. He has them as finger food to tie him over while I make dinner or if he's still hugry after what I send with him to daycare. he has a small handful maybe once or twice a week. We stick to egg yolks for breakfast (fried or in an omlet makes great finger food)

 

We use organic rice puffs.

 

We give dd a few generic oat o's every day. She doesn't eat many (maybe 2 or 3), so I am not concerned about the sodium content.

 

we do organic brown puffed rice. she loves them!

 

I say Cheerios are okay. They were my son's first solid food. He would touch nothing else until he picked up a Cheerio at 11.5 months. It was fine with me and I think the Cheerios gave him his "entrance" to other solid foods.

I agree organic cereals are healthier than Cheerios but sometimes the organic cereals are bigger or take longer to get mushy in the mouth. Cheerios get mushy really fast and are the right size so I never worried about choking. In a younger baby who seemed interested in solids I might give Cheerios before organic cereals.

 

I don't think Cherrio's are a problem, although we do the knock off from Aldi.

The mush up in the mouth and the kids really like them. The boxes I buy are $1.29 or so.

 

i saw lots of nays but how come? veggie booty (at least the ones i know of) are really salty. is it the sugar in cheerios? i thought that the sugar was much less than that of many other organic cheerio knock-offs. but i don't know, its been a few years since i've looked. so why don't folks like cheerios?

 

nay, but my ds is only 10 months. I'm waiting on grains until 1 or 2 years and then probably not very many.

 

I prefer the organic versions of cherrios, and puffed rice or the healthy times teddy puffs are great to.

but as someone above said, the organic os are a little harder, I do sometimes give ds the fruit or veggie puffs from gerber and cherrios, but only as a treat.

 

We do Cheerios (or the organic version). We have no family history of food allergies, so I'm less cautious than some moms. And my kids both love them. (Actually, I just finished eating a bowl . . . yum!)

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by bratmobile i saw lots of nays but how come? veggie booty (at least the ones i know of) are really salty. is it the sugar in cheerios? i thought that the sugar was much less than that of many other organic cheerio knock-offs. but i don't know, its been a few years since i've looked. so why don't folks like cheerios?

I was wondering that too. I think Cheerios are OK.

 

Cold cereal is not real food?

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I say Yay! My DD LOVES Cheerios, and it might surprise some...but they are actually pretty good as far as fare goes!

A good snack choice!

 

yay!

we all love cheerios (or Joes O's) here!

 

the reason i don't give them is that they are dead food - no enzymes, no trace of anything natural in there. just HIGHLY processed grains with some chemical vitamins sprayed on at the end. why get your child used to such empty calories from the start? why not give them snacks that are actually good for their blossoming little bodies?

here's some good information about why cereal is a bad idea:

http://nourishingourchildren.org/parents/cereal.html

"An extruder is an industrial machine that produces little flakes, O's and other shapes and puffed grains using high temperatures and pressures. The cereal industry has convinced the FDA that extruded grains are no different from non-extruded grains and has contrived to ensure that no studies have been published on the effects of extruded foods on either humans or animals. However, two unpublished animal studies indicate that extruded grains are toxic, particularly to the nervous system."

"Paul Stitt described one in his book Fighting the Food Giants. Four sets of rats were given special diets. One group received plain whole wheat, water, vitamins and minerals. Another group received Puffed Wheat, water and the same nutrient solution. A third set was given water and white sugar, and a fourth given nothing but water and the chemical nutrients. The rats that received the whole wheat lived over a year on the diet. The rats that got nothing but water and vitamins lived for about eight weeks, and the animals on a white sugar and water diet lived for a month. But [the company's] own laboratory study showed that rats given vitamins, water and all the Puffed Wheat they wanted died in two weeks. It wasn't a matter of the rats dying of malnutrition; results like these suggested that there was something actually toxic about the Puffed Wheat itself. Proteins are very similar to certain toxins in molecular structure, and the puffing process of putting the grain under 1500 pounds per square inch of pressure and then releasing it may produce chemical changes which turn a nutritious grain into a poisonous substance."

sorry to rain on everyone's parade.

i used to give them to dd too, when i didn't think there was anything wrong with them. once i realized what cereal was about, i began giving her much more healthful snacks, such as avocado chunks, cooked apples, chunks of raw cheese, scrambled eggs, stuff like that as age appropriate.

HTH!

 

we like trader joe's yogurt o's or berry o's without as much sugar and not like cheerios or the knockoffs

we also liek veggie booty and whole grain crackers and crunchy dried fruits and veggies and frozen peas !

 

well we don't eat them everyday. more like once a week at most! I don't see anything wrong with it in moderation and it's better than some crap I see people giving their kids! (And this is coming from someone who used to be hardcore organic) my kids eat all those foods mentioned in the above posts but they do like cereal. I do agree it is "brown" food though and probably not good to eat all the time!

 

At what age did you all find it appropriate to give Cheerios or its equivalent?

For those of you who held off on them, why?

 

I agree that Cheerios are not the most nutritious thing ever, but as others have said, they are good for very beginning eaters because of how quickly/easily they dissolve. I gave them to my dd as her first finger food and she LOVES them because she can self-feed and it's a great way for her to work on her fine motor skills with her fingers. She just isn't interested in being spoon-fed purees, and she isn't ready for the more advanced finger foods yet because she has no teeth and is still working on the whole chewing concept.

So, for this developmental stage, Cheerios are great. Once she gets a bit more experienced with chewing, maybe gets a few teeth, and once I feel confident in her ability to chew/swallow (or in her gag reflex), I'll probably switch to Veggie Booty or similar. Which is basically what I did with ds although he also was a big fan of spoon-feeding.

I do also give dd stuff like bananas, avocado, etc. in the mesh feeder! But she loves her cheerios. It's as much about play/learning as it is eating.

-Joan

 

Nay to Cherrio's--too much sugar (even on the multigrain variety). When DS has cold cereal (a couple of times a month), he has Mighty Bites by Kashi.

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by sidshappymamma Nay to Cherrio's--too much sugar (even on the multigrain variety). When DS has cold cereal (a couple of times a month), he has Mighty Bites by Kashi.

Mighty Bites have more grams of sugar per serving (5 grams) than regular Cheerios (1 gram). The multigrain Cheerios are considerably more heavily sweetened than the regular (6 grams, I think). (I don't really get the idea of making a multigrain version of something and then adding a bunch of sugar to it...

: ) The Mighty Bites ingredients list "evaporated cane juice," which could be healthier than the Cheerios "sugar," though.