Question:  What’s the difference between cereal and pastured eggs cooked in butter and coconut oil, for breakfast?

Answer:  My four year old son’s behavior.

For many reasons, including nutrition and cost, I decided that cold cereal wasn’t worth buying.  First, most cold cereal goes through an extrusion process, contains tons of refined sugars and flours, and has synthetic vitamins put back in to replace the vitamins that have been stripped away in the beginning; even the so-called “healthier” cereals that I bought.  (Btw, organic cold cereal can be just as bad as the conventional stuff).  Cereals are really convenient and take no time to prepare, just three little steps:  get bowl, pour cereal, pour milk.  For busy families, this seems like the easiest thing to do.  And, especially in the mornings, we are a very busy family!

So, now that we no longer had cold cereal in our cupboard, what else was there to eat?  I tried oatmeal, which was fine for a while, until my daughter decided she didn’t like it.  She needs to eat and I don’t have time to make separate breakfasts for everyone.  So, we tried Cream of Wheat (farina).  In my opinion, this is barely a step up from cold cereal, if it is a step up, at all!  Oh, I try to make hot cereal as nutritious and tasty as I can.  We add honey and raisins, or butter and cream…maybe a little sucanat…still doesn’t make up for the cereal itself.  I mean, all of these grains have phytates that are supposed to be anti-nutrients.  Some of the phytates can be removed by soaking, but that is another post!  (And adds another step to making breakfast!)

What else does that leave for breakfast?  Eggs, bacon, soaked pancakes, yogurt, smoothies, sprouted or sourdough toast, etc…The list could go on and on.  We usually have eggs and sourdough toast for breakfast.  It honestly doesn’t take that much more time than pouring a bowl of cereal, and certainly no more time than making hot cereal.  The way we make them varies by day: over-medium, scrambled or omelets, sometimes with cheese and/or veggies, maybe a little leftover steak or ham.  We love our eggs!!  According to Dr. Sears, “Eggs are an excellent nutrient-dense food that packs six grams of protein, a bit of vitamin B-12, vitamin E, riboflavin, folic acid, calcium, zinc, iron, and essential fatty acids into a mere 75 calories. Second to the lactalbumin protein in human milk, eggs have the highest quality protein of any food.”  Click here to read more from Dr. Sears.

Back to the question that I posted at the beginning of the post:  What’s the difference between cereal and pastured eggs cooked in butter and coconut oil, for breakfast?  The answer is my four year old son’s behavior.  What does this have to do with everything else that I posted?  We have been eating eggs for breakfast for a long time.  My kids are typical kids and see commercials for cereal and have friends who eat mostly cereal for breakfast.  Sometimes, they want cereal!  Of course, sometimes my husband wants the cereal!  (He’s the one that most often makes the breakfasts during the week).  The other day, I obliged and picked up a box of “toastie-o’s” from the store.  The kids were so excited that mom actually bought a box of cereal!  And, I have to admit that it is mighty convenient to have something that allows my oldest son to fix his own breakfast.  He’ll even pour bowls for the youngest two!

The kids had toastie-o’s on Wednesday morning.  It was then that I noticed my youngest son’s behavior.  He can be, um, spirited, but this morning was different; he refused to cooperate at all!  He threw a fit getting into the car, another fit trying to get him in his booster, another fit when we were dropping the older kids off at school…fit after fit!  Now, like I said, he’s spirited, but he isn’t usually so much so.  We ate eggs and tortillas on Thursday and his behavior was just fine.  No problems until Friday, when we had cereal again.  The funny thing is that he actually acts better when he doesn’t eat before we take the kids to school!  I don’t know if I want to test my theory again, and I know there needs to be more evidence before I can come to a true conclusion.  This definitely didn’t put in play the Scientific Method!  However, my current thought is that the cereal is not good for him.  Now, before you say it could be the oats, or the wheat, I should tell you that it doesn’t happen this way when we eat oatmeal or cream of wheat.  We also put lots of fats in those, which we can’t do as much with cereal, except for the milk.

If I ever buy cereal again, it will be strictly as a treat, not for breakfast…that is IF I ever buy it again!  I wonder if that organic granola cereal with the chocolate chunks would be better…