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Comment by mrob | Hacker News Reader

No breakfast cereals are 75% sugar. The USDA Nutrient Database allows you to list breakfast cereals by sugar:

https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/nutrients/report/nutrientsfrm?m...

The most sugary breakfast cereal is only 56% sugar. The database doesn't list every breakfast cereal sold, but it includes all the popular ones, and it's implausible that any could be so much more sugary than those included to be 75%.

Even a cereal where sugar is the main selling point (Kellogg's Frosted Flakes) is only 35% sugar.

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Froot Loops have 25.3g of net digestible carbs (total carbs minus fiber) per 30g serving. That's 84%.

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/breakfast-cereals/1532/2

I'm fairly certain your link only includes added sugars which is not the total number of digestible sugars (digestible carbs = digestible sugars). Unfortunately, most people have the misconception that carbs from "natural sources" (fruits, starches, grains, etc.) don't effect your blood sugar the same as added sugars, but that is incorrect.

Starches are digested to sugars, and they may indeed have similar effect on blood sugar in some cases, but the article did not say "75 percent carbs", it said "75 percent sugar". "Sugar" usually means HFCS or sucrose, both of which contain a high proportion of fructose, which is metabolised differently to the pure glucose you get from digesting starch. Additionally, there's some evidence that taste influences overeating, and starch does not have the sweet taste of sugar. Japan has the longest life expectancy in the world and their diet includes large quantities of rice, so starch is not obviously harmful.

Does that include sugar substitutes, aka sweeteners?

From the documentation:

"Total sugars is the term used for the sum of the individual monosaccharides (galactose, glucose, and fructose) and disaccharides (sucrose, lactose, and maltose)."

http://www.ars.usda.gov/sp2UserFiles/Place/80400525/Data/SR/...

Sugar substitutes are generally hundreds of times sweeter than the sugar they replace so they wouldn't even be a blip on the composition by mass. This is why cans of diet coke float in water but cans of regular coke sink.

75% sucralose sounds horrid. I can't imagine anyone would want to eat a bowlful of Splenda for breakfast.

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