Shopping tips: How to choose a good breakfast cereal

Are you a fan of cereal for breakkie? Find it difficult to know which to choose? It’s okay! This guide will help make the breakfast cereal challenge that little bit easier.

First things first, I realise some people out there don’t think breakfast cereal is a good option, but it definitely can be! After a sleeve you need to focus on protein, but fibre, whole grains and other vitamins found in cereals (like B vitamins, calcium, vitamin A and zinc) are important too. Not to mention that cereal can be a quick, easy, relatively cheap and filling breakfast option. You do need to be careful though as some options can be quite low in nutrients and high in sugar, so you just need to know what to look for.

What are the breakfast cereal choices?

We can break down the breakfast aisle into oats and porridge, muesli and commercial cereal products.

• Oats and porridge are always a good choice. Oats are a good source of B vitamins and soluble fibre which helps reduce cholesterol reabsorption. It is best to choose the rolled oats over instant though as they have a lower GI so they will fill you up for longer.

• Muesli is another excellent option but there are so many to choose from! Some are roasted in oil, baked in honey or untoasted, but all have some combination of fruit and/or nuts added for extra flavour. You do have to be a bit cautious with muesli as some can have quite a bit of added sugar or fat so read the labels. See below for what to look for.

• Commercial cereals are probably the biggest section and the most confusing! There are sooooo many options with lots of different claims on the package. Many can be really high in sugar and salt and low in fibre, but you can find some good options that also taste good. For these, you do need to spend a bit of time looking at the label on the back of the box.

Quick Tip: Always serve your cereal with milk or make your porridge with milk rather than water, so you get the protein boost. You can also sprinkle over some clear protein supplement like Beneprotein to boost the protein content even further!

What to look for in a breakfast cereal

There are four things in general to look for when buying a cereal: Fibre, wholegrain, sugar and salt.

Cereals will have different serving sizes listed, often a lot bigger than what you’ll have with a sleeve. So I’ve given you the following guidelines per 100g so you can easily compare apples with apples and use the per 100g column. So here goes…

Fibre

The higher the fibre, the better, so look for one that has at least 10g per 100g. Some cereals can have a little as 2g fibre per 100g (think Rice Bubbles or Cocoa Pops) and some can have up to 30g (think All-Bran).

Quick tip: Boost the fibre of your cereal by sprinkling some Psyllium Husks or Bran over your bowl at the end, too.

Wholegrain

There is now lots of evidence to suggest whole grains are important protectors of our long term health (you can find some of that here). To boost your wholegrain intake for the day, make sure you choose a cereal that contains 50 per cent whole grains or more. The more, the better. Rolled oats (100%) and less processed cereals like Weet-Bix (97%) are the way to go here. You’ll usually find the information on the front of the pack, but otherwise look at the ingredients list for the words ‘whole’ or ‘wholegrain’ – ideally within the first three ingredients!

Sugar

Cereal can be really high in sugar, sometimes without you even realising. However, it’s important to check where the sugar is coming from – is it natural, from the addition of dried fruit? Or is it added in the form of cane sugar, sucrose, maltose or molasses?

Sadly, our nutrition labelling doesn’t separate natural from added sugars, so you need to use the ingredients list as well. It’s generally accepted to look for ideally 15g sugar per 100g or less or 25g sugar per 100g or less if the  cereal has dried fruit as an ingredient.

Sodium (salt)

A low-sodium product contains less than 120mg of sodium per 100g, but you’ll see that most breakfast cereals contain well above this amount. So, a breakfast cereal with 300mg or less of sodium per 100g is a good option (but the lower the better obviously!).

To sum it all up…

So, check your cupboard…. How does your cereal stack up?

If you’d like to see my top 10 picks for cereals that meet all of the above criteria click here.