Hopefully we can agree that having dessert for breakfast probably isn’t the best choice. But that’s exactly what’s happening to children when they’re fed cereal for breakfast.
Dr. Martin recently made a trip to the cereal aisle of a grocery store, and his findings are not good. With the amount of sugar in some of these cereals, it’s no wonder juvenile diabetes continues to be on the rise. The kids don’t have a chance!
Join Dr. Martin as he makes the case for eliminating cereal from our diets!
TRANSCRIPT OF TODAY'S EPISODE
Announcer: You're listening to The Doctor Is In Podcast, brought to you by MartinClinic.com. During the episode, the doctors share a lot of information. As awesome as the info may be, it is not intended to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent any disease. It's strictly for informational purposes.
Dr. Martin: Well, good afternoon everyone. Hope you're having a great day. It's nice to come on this afternoon. And let me make a statement. And I did a little bit of investigative journalism. Okay. On my own. We all love dessert, right? Put your hand up if you love dessert. Of course, we love dessert. Okay. Now I try and avoid almost all desserts. Me and desserts don't do well together as much as I love them. But who doesn't love desserts, right?
The problem with dessert is when you eat desserts in the morning. Okay. And I was going through the grocery store the other day, the cereal section. And I said, man, that is a crime against humanity, especially to children. I think parents have no idea just how bad the situation is. I don't live on another planet. I fully understand like you've got a budget. You have just a certain amount of money. And today with inflation and everything that's going on I understand that it's not cheap. You want to go to an expensive outing, go to a grocery store near you. I mean, it's expensive. In the last year there, it's absolutely incredible. But as I went through the cereal section, and then I'm going to tell you what I did after that. But I went to the cereal section. I took out four or five boxes and I read the label.
It wasn't good. It wasn't good. Kids are having dessert for breakfast. That's what it means. Okay. A couple of that I pulled up, Honey Smacks. Well, don't feed your kids that stuff. Honey Smacks from Kellogg's, 56% of the box was sugar, added sugar over half the box. I felt like putting my arms out across the section and saying, you cannot come here. This is dangerous. You are going to turn your kid into a diabetic in a short period of time if you feed them Honey Smacks, Raisin Bran, like it sounds healthy, Raisins Bran, Raisin Bran 16 grams of sugar added. Raisins are pretty sweet. You don't have to add no sugar, but they do. Raisin Bran, 16 added grams of sugar, four teaspoons of sugar added. Like kids don't have a chance today. They don't have a chance today. I couldn't find a cereal that had very little added sugar and you could be sure kids ain't eating that stuff.
Don't kid yourself. I've been railing against cereal for 50 years. It's not good for you. And the reason they push cereal and they have to put sugar in cereal, otherwise it would taste like cardboard, kids wouldn't eat it. And they entice the parents with it's got a lot of fiber in it. Well, fiber's really overrated, big time, especially if it comes from cereal. Any benefit that you would get at all from fiber is lost on the amount of sugar and carbohydrates that are in them. And you know what they do with cereal? It always drives me crazy. It's fortified. It's so bad nutritionally, they fortified it. Oh, we've added vitamin D, not D3, they add vitamin D2. Guys, you might as well give that to your dog because human beings do not absorb vitamin D2. You don't absorb it. It's fortified. Those fortified vitamins that they put in there. Nah, you're not getting much.
Whenever you see something fortified, it's because they took all the nutrition out of it and then figured they better put some of it back. And they put a few vitamins in and done. Guys, it is a tragedy that children are fed that kind of stuff. Then I went over to the dairy. Now you guys know me. I never tell anyone to ditch dairy. I tell them to switch dairy. The problem is when you look at, I decided I'm going to look at a few yogurts. Now, if you get a Greek plain yogurt, there's already six to seven grams on average of sugar.
Now that's not added guys. Okay. It's Greek plain yogurt. Me, I think that's too sweet. It's got seven grams of sugar. It's all lactose. But that's not what kids are eating. Kids don't eat Greek plain yogurt. They wouldn't touch that with a hundred foot pole. If you got to a kid eating that stuff good for you because it's better than a lot of other stuff. It's Greek, it's plain, it's dairy, but it's got sugar, but that's because yogurt's got sugar. It's got lactose, seven grams on an average that I saw. The problem is kids are not eating that. They're eating the sugar laced yogurts. You should have seen the little smoothie yogurts that they can have. Boy, 20, 25 grams of added sugar.
And they fool people because oh, yogurt must be good. It's better than giving them cereal in my opinion. I mean, there is just no cereal worth it in my opinion including oatmeal. I didn't hear oatmeal so much from kids. I always laugh a little bit about oatmeal because I used to hear it from the seniors in my office all the time. Well, [inaudible 00:08:19] right? I got to have my oatmeal every morning because if I don't have my oatmeal, I'm not going to go to the bathroom. I heard that a million times. Okay. But guys, this is a big, big problem. We're starting kids out in their lifetime by giving them dessert for breakfast.
It starts them what a terrible path. And as I was explaining to Dr. McQuwens class yesterday, these kids are going to develop insulin resistance. You know what? Half the population of kids are already in the obese section of society. You know what guys, if we just got bigger, it wouldn't be that bad. We can be bigger. You want to be big. Let's celebrate. Eh, it's not that, that bothers me guys. It isn't. It's not the fact of obesity. It is diabesity. That's what bothers me. Kids are suffering from diabesity. The problem is simple. It's not complicated, but we're losing the war with our children because of the society in which we live. They're feeding kids and the food industry, they're not stupid. They get called a lot.
I was reading an article in The New York Times recently. They're calling out these food companies, cereal companies to please voluntarily cut back on the sugar content in foods for children. They're not doing it. I'll tell you why they're not doing it. The all mighty dollar. And parents and grandparents, listen to me. Kids are very intelligent, really intelligent. It needs to start with you. It needs to start with you. Why am I having bacon and eggs in the morning? Why am I having sausages and no toast? Kids are smart. They looked, they watch and say, well just a little conversations.
I used to have many conversations with children in the office. I had probably over the years, thousands, I mean not hundreds. Thousands of children with ADD and ADHD. I had many children on the spectrum of autism and they were just a boing, a boing, a boing, a boing. They were in trouble all the time. They couldn't focus. I can understand the teachers. You got a kid that's bouncing off walls. And I had to give them a nutrition 101 with their parents. Yeah, but he doesn't like, I said, let me talk to Joe myself. Now, Joe or Susie you like being in trouble? No. Can I tell you what makes your brain go crazy? Yeah. Sugar. What? Yeah. Sugar's not good for anybody.
You empty out your five liters of blood and you'll find less than a teaspoon in there of sugar. That's how toxic sugar is. But you, my friend pretend you're one of my patients. Okay. I care. But you, my friend, you do not do well with sugar. Your brain, you're the little Canary in the coal mine. I would tell them the story of the miners in the late 1800s and early 1900s. And they'd go underground. And they didn't know if there was methane gas there or not. They brought canaries with them. The canaries died, they got out of there. I said, you happen to be the Canary in the coal mine. You're hypersensitive to sugar. I'm not telling you, you can never have it again. I won't do that, but I want you to start your day, I want you to start your day, because that's going to be the most important part of your eating is to start your day and avoid sugar.
Can you do that? It's the only way to stay out of trouble. And it's the only way they're not going to give you Ritalin and sedate you to death. I used to talk to a lot of teachers. I did a lot of school board events, nutritionally, and I used to tell teachers under no circumstances, zero, nada, none, should a child ever be medicated for ADD, or ADHD, or bad behavior. Never, never, never, never should be medicated. Why? Because that's not fixing the problem. You're sedating them. To me, that's child abuse. You don't sedate children. You fix it with their diet. And then I would tell them the story of, you know what kids are eating? And teachers, not their fault. I said, they're having dessert at home before they get to school.
Now every parent knows, every grandparent knows you don't give kids sugar at night when you're sending them home or they're going to bed, you don't give them sugar. They're going to be off the walls. I said, these kids, that's what they're eating. This has been going on for a long time. Cereal's been around for a long time. And I was always against it because I said, you think you're getting away with that, but you're not getting away with it, especially children that have focus problems big time. And I'm going to tell you something. There's no doubt in my mind that when you get adults that are bipolar, schizophrenic, I tell you it's a nutrition problem at the base of it. It's not a lack of medication. It's a lack of nutrients. And one of the worst things you can do for your brain is start your day with sugar.
That is one of the worst things you can do, is start your day with sugar. You don't need it. Look, I talked to you about bananas and fruit and, but I'd rather a kid have some fruit. Not that I think it's that great, but I'd rather a kid have fruit then give them cereal. But the other issue is this. It's the coming tsunami that's already hit by the way, we're just going to hear the effect and see the effect of this and that is kids and diabesity. You like that word? Diabesity coming and already here in a theater near you. And I'm telling you guys, every chronic disease is going to have some link to diabesity. These kids are being damaged for life. Their livers, their blood vessels, their brains. It's a terrible thing. And it bothers me.
Our world is so upside down. They throw kids under the bus. They throw kids under the bus. And as a parent, and as a grandparent, and as great grandparent kids, like I've lived my life. I'm more interested in those kids down the road, my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren. Here we are in 2022. I go to the grocery store and I thank God we can go to the grocery store, but I just can't handle how people fill their carts with complete lack of nutrition, getting ready to give kids, especially dessert for breakfast. Guys, that bothers me big time. I was telling someone the other day that when a doctor, when they see kids, they want them to grow this way. Okay. Vertically.
Yeah. I want to see them growing. Okay. I love that. I watch my grandchildren and I mean, they grow like weeds, but I don't want to see them growing horizontally, getting big this way, if you know what I mean. Yeah. Good to be taller, but you don't want to be struggling with fatty liver. Children with fatty liver, I never, never thought in my lifetime I would ever see it. And in my last 10 years of practice, I tell you, I saw fatty liver in children. It was a scourge on our society. Poor kids, they didn't even know. Heading for the cliff as far as their health is concerned, heading for a lifetime of taking medications to treat high blood pressure and to treat high blood sugar. And the answer is right in food. So let us, you and I, let's go out and educate to the ones who will listen. You can bring a horse to water. You can't make them drink it. If you can turn them on, kids are not stupid. Like I said, it's amazing. Kids can listen even to a podcast and they can get the big picture very quickly.
If they did nothing else and cut back on sugar, it would be huge. And I could've spent a whole session here talking about the food industry and how they got 100 names, different names for sugar. And you know what it is guys. It's all crap. It's all fructose, high fructose corn syrup. They give it different names. They get away with it. It bothers me. But they're not using, oh, let's just give them real good sugar. Well, there's not many, but that's not what they're doing. They're using high fructose corn syrup. And that is a whole other story of how bad that Frankenstein sugar is.
I'm telling you guys, it's one of the reasons we see so much mental problems in kids, so much emotional, I know there's a lot of other factors, but nutrition is an essential part of brain and emotional health. Nutrition is important. Don't feed your kids dessert for breakfast is the moral of the story. Okay. Now you know what tomorrow is, question and answer Friday. So it's not too late. Get your questions. We're going to answer as many questions we can tomorrow. Okay. I put on my track suit. They don't say that anymore do they? For Friday. Okay. Because I know I got to run and get to all the questions. I look forward to it, by the way. It reminds me of my radio days, live, no screen calls, people call in doc, what do you think about this or that or whatever. Right. And no chance to prepare or whatever. You know what, kept me on my toes. Okay. We're looking forward to that. Okay. We love you guys. We'll talk to you soon.
Announcer: You've reached the end of another Doctor Is In Podcast, with your hosts, Doctor Martin Junior and Senior. Be sure to catch our next episode and thanks for listening!