Quaker Apple Walnut Oatmeal Has More Sugar Than a S’mores Pop Tart

And other surprising facts about your favorite breakfast convenience foods.

We’re told that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. For many of us, it’s also the most rushed. Convenience foods like frozen waffles, toaster pastries, and cereal are quick, comforting, and often nostalgic. (I will always associate Lucky Charms with Girl Scout camping trips.) But how healthy are they? We decided to find out:

Our analysis of the nutritional labels yielded some surprises. For example: Quaker apple walnut oatmeal contained more sugar (22 grams) than a S’mores Pop Tart (19 grams).

For each category, we tried to choose at least one product whose packaging suggested it was a healthy alternative to traditional breakfast convenience foods. The comparisons were sometimes surprising. For example: Eggo’s “nutrigrain” waffle had more sugar than its buttermilk version. Nutritionally speaking, the Nature’s Path Wildberry Acai toaster pastry was almost identical to the S’mores Pop Tart—the only differences were that the Wildberry Acai pastry contained slightly more calories and saturated fat, and only one gram less sugar, than the S’mores version.

Here’s a comparison of the nutritional labels of each product by category:

Cereals:

Breakfast pastries:

Waffles:

Oatmeals:

Cinnamon breads:

All breakfasts:

 
 

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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