Cereal Types

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

Cereal Types

There are so many cereal types to choose from, how can we make the right choices!

We have all heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.  According to WebMD, breakfast is linked to weight control and improved performance.  Citing the following health benefits of certain cereal types:

• A more nutritionally complete diet, higher in nutrients, vitamins and minerals
• Improved concentration and performance in the classroom or the boardroom
• More strength and endurance to engage in physical activity
• Lower cholesterol levels in certain cereal types

When you eat breakfast, you tend to eat less during the day, and make healthier choices at other meals.  Skipping breakfast, on the other hand, can lead some people to believe they are saving on calories, but the opposite may be true.  People who skip breakfast tend  to overeat at other meals throughout the day.  Often eating more calories that they think they actually do.   So paying attention to cereal types can be beneficial.

Cereal types tends to be one of the most popular breakfast items because of their ease of preparation and availability.  But with all the cereal types on the market, it’s hard to decide which one is best for you.

Several cereal types claim to have health benefits – whole grains, low sugar, low sodium, low cholesterol, heart healthy, low fat – what should your choices be for cereal types?

A healthy breakfast should include a good portion of protein as well as whole grain carbohydrates.  However, many of the cereal types on the market today advertise to entice you to buy products that may not be the best choices.

Cereal Types – Sugar content

One of the first things your should look for is sugar content.  Your cereal should not have more than 6-7 grams of sugar, if any at all.

Cereal Types – Ingredients

Look at the ingredient list – What you want to go for is whole grains, however the USDA’s standards for labeling something as “whole grain” can be a bit deceiving.  You want to look for cereal types with 100% whole grains.  Another thing to keep in mind is that when you look at an ingredient list on a food label of certain cereal types, the first ingredients listed are the ingredients that are most prevalent in that food.  For example:

So you can see (maybe) from the ingredient label of Froot Loops, the first ingredient listed is Sugar.  That means that the most prevalent ingredient in this product is Sugar.   The second ingredient listed in whole grain corn flour which would make some people think that this is a “whole grain” product.  But unless it states specifically that it is 100% whole grain, it’s not.   This is a processed food that is high in sugar and low in any real nutrients.  You do not want to eat this for breakfast!

Now most people would look at this product and just know that this is not a healthy choice.  But what about this:

So, looking at this product, we can see that it looks like a fairly healthy choice.  It has honey, which is a natural ingredient, and it claims to have “no trans fats!”  But if we look at the ingredient list, we notice that corn flour is the first ingredient (which is a refined product), followed by sugar and then brown sugar!  This product contains high fructose corn syrup, which is one of the ingredients we want to avoid at all costs. And look at all the other ingredients in here.  Do you know what they are?   Nothing good here.

Let’s look at a healthier option for cereal types:

If you look closely at the ingredients in these steel cut oats you will notice that there are “100% steel cut Irish oats.”  Wouldn’t you rather eat that?

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Of all the cereal types on the market, choose wisely!