General Mills Cereal Giveaway and the Importance of Eating Whole Grains #MyBlogSpark

I love cereal. Plain and simple. So when My Blog Spark offered to send me 5 boxes of General Mills cereal, I jumped at the offer.

While I don’t often eat cereal for breakfast, when I do, I almost always eat Cheerios topped with fruit. I know that I am eating a whole grain cereal that isn’t loaded with sugar.

Whole grains are important in every diet. Here are some tips provided by My Blog Spark that I wanted to share with you:

According to Dr. Travis Stork, emergency room physician and host of “The Doctors,” identifying whole grain products can be challenging. Shoppers can look for nutritional cues on the front of the box, but they need to read the ingredient list to know if they are getting enough whole grain. Ingredient lists detail ingredients in order of prevalence, and if the words “whole grain” are followed by a grain like wheat or oats, it means the food contains more whole grain than any other single ingredient. Here’s how to determine if your cereals have whole grain as a first ingredient:

With all the health messages facing grocery store shoppers, it can be confusing to translate what appears on food labels into nutritional needs, and hard to determine which foods have a meaningful amount of whole grain. Dr. Stork has some additional recommendations to help you include whole grain easily into your diet. They include:

• Start Early! The Dietary Guidelines recommend people get at least 48 grams of whole grain in their daily diets. Get a jump-start on the day’s nutrition by incorporating whole grain into your morning routine. For instance, when choosing cereal make sure whole grain is listed as the first ingredient. One easy choice is cereal with the white check, which have more whole grain than any other single ingredient.
• Make Simple Swaps. Choose whole grain versions of the foods you love. Great options include whole wheat pasta and whole wheat bread or even whole grain crackers. Also, try different types of whole grain. Use brown rice instead of white rice as a side dish at dinner or popcorn, which is a whole grain, for a snack.
• Don’t Judge a Food by Its Cover. The front of food packages provide good nutritional cues, but don’t forget to read the ingredients and check the nutrition label and side labels for additional health information. Cereals with the white check even include the amount of whole grain per serving on packaging.

So be sure to look for those cereals with the white check!

For more information on the importance of whole grain and a chance to enter the “Fast Lane for Whole Grain” sweepstakes, visit www.WholeGrainNation.com.

General Mills and My Blog Spark have offered to send one lucky winner a box of each of these cereals:

How can you win? Leave a separate comment for each entry.

1. Tell me how you fit whole grains into your diet.
2. What is your favorite cereal with the white check mark?
3. Tweet about this giveaway linking back to this post, mentioning @AJourneyToThin and #My BlogSpark.