This morning I decided to look at what the manufacturer (Post) recommends as a serving size for a bowl of the cereal I eat. ‘Tain’t much folks. A half cup of cereal together with a half cup of milk is supposed to get you off on the right foot for the day, and to power your 30 minutes a day of vigorous exercise, and to last you until lunch arrives. I’m sure that in some parts of the world this amount of food might seem quite adequate. Indeed! it might be the stuff of gratitude in some countries.
Unfortunately, here in the U. S., it seems like a really small amount of food for a meal, and the bad thing is that most of the time I don’t measure out the recommended serving size. I usually just “eyeball” it instead. And doing that means that I probably pour out about two and a half servings of it. Now this suggested serving size (1/2 cup or 54 grams), together with the half cup of milk, yields 250 calories, 4 grams of fiber, and 14 grams of sugar(s). You can do the math to see that my eyeballing a serving means I’m consuming far too much of the stuff and using far too many of my allotted calories for the day by eating it. If I’m going to eat like this, I need to spend all of the remainder of my day exercising, in the hope that I can work off all the calories I’m consuming.