What to Look for in Breakfast Cereal
Raise your hand if your go-to breakfast is a bowl of cereal. If not for you, is it your kid’s breakfast?
As a child of the 80s cereal was breakfast. More specifically, sugary cereal like the one with crunch berries, or cocoa, or charmed shape marshmallows. I would even wake up early on Saturday mornings to watch the cartoon train and eat all the marshmallows from the box of cereal, then eat a different cereal Monday morning and watch my brother eat the one I ransacked over the weekend. It was a small, evil pleasure I got. :)
But when and why did we decide cereal is the best thing to eat for breakfast? It’s loaded with things that aren’t even food. Some of the more popular brands even have glyphosate (aka RoundUp weed killer) found in them. While they are definitely a quick and easy option, are they nutritious at all???
Let’s start by breaking down what you want to have in a cereal. You want there to be real ingredients that are foods you can read. You want to have at 3 grams of fiber, 3 grams of protein, and less than 6 grams of sugar. The way this shows up on a nutrition label, think 3-6-3. You also want to stick with whole grains, not fortified.
So let’s look at a popular multigrain cereal nutrition label.
It has 4 grams of fiber and 7 grams of protein, which is great, but it also has 17 grams of sugar!!! Then hopping over to the ingredients we see brown sugar, sugar, corn syrup, natural flavor (which could be anything at all), caramel, added color, more sugar, honey, refiners syrup, preservatives, more brown sugar, and canola oil (which can cause inflammation). This doesn’t even include all the sugar you’re getting when adding milk!
This is NOT the best way to start your day. All that sugar will have you crashing in an hour and there isn’t enough protein to balance the carbohydrates.
If you really want a grain for a breakfast, go with oatmeal, the traditional kind or steel-cut oats, not instant. This will give you 4 grams of fiber, 6 grams of protein, and 0 grams of sugar. Opt for a healthier brand that doesn’t have a reputation for glyphosate. I like the giant bag of One Degree Organic Foods Sprouted Oats from Costco because they’re also gluten free. Nature’s Path and Bob’s Red Mill are also good options and at most grocery stores.
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