Coco Pops - allowed?

please say yes! they'd make it worth getting through the day for :P

Ingredients

Rice , Sugar , Chocolate (4%) (Sugar, Cocoa Mass) , Fat Reduced Cocoa Powder , Calcium Carbonate , Salt , Barley Malt Flavouring , Flavouring , Niacin , Iron , Vitamin B6 , Riboflavin (B2) , Thiamin (B1) , Folic Acid , Vitamin B12 .


Nutritional Values
Typical values per 30g serving with 125ml of s/s milk
Energy 743 kJ 175 kcal
Protein 6 g
Carbohydrate 32 g
of which sugars 17 g
starch 15 g
Fat 3 g
of which saturates 1.5 g
Fibre 0.6 g
Sodium 0.15 g
Salt 0.35 g

Vitamins: (% RDA)
Thiamin (B1) 0.4 mg (29)
Riboflavin (B2) 0.7 mg (44)
Niacin 4.7 mg (26)
Vitamin B6 0.6 mg (29)
Folic Acid 58 µg (29)
Vitamin B12 0.77 µg (77)

Minerals:
Calcium 288 mg (36)
Iron 2.4 mg (17)

I'd say no on the LE diet - no to chocolate and no to all the added minerals and vitamins!

Here are some of the treats I regularly enjoy, see if any of those take your fancy:

Jam tarts
Bakewell tarts
Viennese Whirls
Custard Creams
Cheese & Onion crisps
Tutti Fruttis
Fox's Glacier Fruits
Iced Buns
WW Ice Cream Sundae
WW white chocolate ice-creams

These are basically all empty calories - they have calories but not alot of protein and not alot of sodium (aside from the crisps and iced buns but they have little enough that they're easy to fit into my daily allowance) and not alot of goodness!

there's barely any chocolate in coco pops though, 4% is a tiny amount and an even lower percentage of that will be the cocoa itself

those treats you suggested do also sound good ;)

You could eat them if you wanted to, most of us just choose to avoid chocolate and things with added goodness! It depends what else you've eaten too because 175 cals/6g protein/150mg sodium isn't that bad - but possibly not do-able if you've had a sandwich for lunch and pasta for dinner. If it's something you really want and you're happy that it fits the general principals of the diet and you have room in your daily allowance then you should eat it - especially if it helps you to stick with it longer term.

Not strictly - cereals are so highly fortified (at least here in the States) that a bowl of cereal is basically like taking a vitamin. Esp. since most of us eat way more than the serving size.

That having been said, if you're dying for something chocolatey, it's a better choice than some things are, I suppose!! BE sure to watch your overall day's total and stay within limits, and also watch your serving size and use only a very small amount of fat-free milk (better yet, unfortified rice milk.)