If you didn’t know it already,Cheerios are a great low calorie heart healthy whole grain wonder food that boasts quite a few nutritional highlights. For starters,the calorie count listed for one 28 gram(1 cup)serving is just a measly 100!  Now get this,you won’t find a single gram of saturated fat anywhere!  That’s right,ZERO,ZILCH,NADA. Here is a fun fact, you won’t find more than160 mg water retaining sodium floating around in your spoon either.   Want to keep the sugar down?   How does a low 1g of sugar sound? Now, outside of the heart healthy, soluable fiber you will receive from the 3 grams(11% d.v.) you will find in your bowl,you will also benefit from the bone building, tooth strengthening, 10% daily value (100mg) scoop of calcium!!  All this and you are helping yourself to lower cholesterol!   Sounds like great fun right?   Well when was the last time you tried to pitch this sale to your kids?  Put a bland bowl of these round blah blah biscuits in the face of your 3rd grader and your sure to have more of them spilled on the floor than into the belly of your 10 year old.

Want to conquer this mishap?  True you could go out and experiment with many of the other flavors that General Mills has to offer. Honey nut is definately one of my favorites.  Since I am a grown up now I even like the multi grain variety.  Still, I am a kid at heart and if I know my child side, I still want to have fun with my food.

That’s why you should try this little twist to the cereal bowl.  One fun thing to do that is surprisingly still health full and not too bad for your rugrats is to put a low fat to skim “CHOCOLATE” milk into their morning chow bucket!  This will sure to surprise even the most stubborn 15 year old at the breakfast table! 

“What does Charlies mom feed him for breakfast?” you ask.

  Well weird guy that would actually ask such a question about a fictitious boy named Charlie and his even more fictitious mother,

“Why… Chocolate milk and Cheerios!!”

And here is why:

1/3rd cup (9.3 grams) of low fat to skim chocolate milk contains only 100 calories itself! Has very few saturated fat grams  (2% daily value)  a little less sugar than an whole cup of Honey nut cheerios, PROTEINS (very handy for muscle development in our growing tots!) Not to forget CALCIUM and VITAMIN D.  And did I forget to mention CHOCOLATE? Yummy tasty chocolate?  If you want to be creative this morning you can even try an antioxidant rich dark chocolate powder, Mix it with  your munchkins skim milk or even better almond or soy milk and give them a much beneficial boost of free radical destroying, flavanoid plenty mouth full of  morning awesomeness!!

After they scarfe that down in maybe two to three inhales, your little angels have only put into there little buddah bellies a whopping 200 calories! Just enough to have them running out the front door and summersaulting onto the bus!

It’s ok, go ahead ,be super mom this morning and surprise your sprouts with a treat that will sure to be the talk of the school yard!

(And maybe if you ask nice, weird question asker guy,Charlies mom will make you a bowl of your own chocolate milk cheerios.)

Disclaimer: Charlie,Charlie’s mom and weird question asker guy do not actually exist! They are make believe characters used for entertainment purposes only. If your name is actually Charlie and your mom actually makes you Chocolate milk cheerios, you may or may not actually have to share with a weird guy asking questions about what your mom feeds you for breakfast.

copyright 2011 Josh Neff