4 Things to Look for When Shopping for Cereal, From Your Dietitian

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!  Why?  It’s the fuel to kick start your day and provide you with the nutrients you need to focus and perform at your best ability.  Knowing this, we want to make sure you are making the best choices at breakfast time to keep you full and not leave you hungry mid-morning.  

Cereal tends to be a signature staple of breakfast but if you don’t focus on some key elements to your cereal you might be left hungry quickly after or even experience a morning sugar crash.  So how do we prevent this from happening?  By focusing on these 4 items that are easy to identify on your cereal box’s nutrition label.    

Whole Grains 

Whole grains are the way to go!  Now, don’t be tricked if you see a catchy phrase about whole grains on the front of the box.  The best place to check if your cereal is filled with whole grains is the ingredient label.  While there, you are looking for ingredients that are considered whole grains like oats, wheat, barley, and rice.  You also want to check the order of the ingredients.  The closer the whole grain product is to the top of the list the better.  The most prominent ingredients are those listed first, so if you see sugar trumping hardy ingredients, keep your cereal search going!  

Fiber 

Fiber helps keep you full after your meals, helps lower cholesterol, prevents constipation and more that can be found in our previous blog by clicking here.  With its health benefits, it is something that we want to see in your cereal selection.  To help you understand fiber on the nutrition label, we first want to identify the amount of fiber we want you to include in your diet daily. Women should consume 25 g fiber/day and men should target about 28 g fiber/day.  Your goal when it comes to “Dietary Fiber” (as it’s written on your nutrition label) is to aim for 4 g of fiber per serving.  

Protein 

Cereal is not known to be a high protein containing food, but it can be something you keep an eye on when reading the nutrition label.  Some cereals do have some protein content to them and if it falls about 5 g of protein or more per serving, you should take that as a win!  

Now even if your cereal does have 5 g protein/serving, we’d recommend we try to increase the amount of fiber at breakfast further.  By adding milk (sometimes!) you can increase your protein consumption.  Dairy milk is going to provide you with the most protein, but if you can not tolerate dairy, there are other options.  See the chart below to help you out! You also can add nuts or flaxseed to your cereal or eat a hardboiled egg on the side to help increase that protein during the first meal of the day.   

Sugar 

Sugar definitely makes your cereal taste good, but can take a toll on your blood sugars and may cause a morning sugar crash…. When you are checking on the cereal’s nutrition label, try to take note of the sugar content listed as “Total Sugars” and “Added Sugars”.  The added sugars are included in the total sugar.  So if total sugars and added sugars differ, you know that there is sugar coming from something else other than added sugar.  Something you might notice this in a cereal that has dried fruit.  Sugar can be coming naturally from dried fruit and from added sugar. 

The rule of thumb when looking at the sugar content of cereal, is to try to keep the total sugars per serving around 5 g or less.  If you struggle with staying away from your sugary cereal, maybe try to mix half of your sugary cereal with half of a less sugar based cereal.  For example, 1 cup of Honey Nut Cheerios contains 12 g total sugar and 1 cup of Original Cheerios contains 2 g total sugar.  If we do ½ cup of Honey Nut Cheerios and ½ cup of Original Cheerios we get our cereal to about 7 g total sugar, which is much closer to our goal of 5 g compared to if we just ate a full serving of Honey Nut Cheerios (12 g).  It’s doable to bring it down a notch, I promise! 

Now that you are filled with all this information, next time you fill up your bowl think twice about your cereal choice.  There just might be a better cereal option out there for you to kick start your day.  

Have a great breakfast! 

This blog was written by Amanda J. Stahl RD, LDN, co-founder of Simple Start Nutrition.  For more blog posts and nutrition information follow @simplestartnutrition on Instagram and Facebook.  Also feel free to contact us, by visiting our website (simplestartnutrition.com) to schedule an appointment to discuss your nutrition related needs.  We’re here to help.

References: 

https://www.eatingwell.com/article/153679/how-to-pick-the-healthiest-breakfast-cereal/

https://www.consumerreports.org/health/cereals/how-to-pick-a-healthy-cereal-a1782557351/

https://www.foodnetwork.com/healthyeats/healthy-tips/2012/01/how-to-choose-a-healthy-cereal

https://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/shopping-storing/food/healthy-cereal

https://www.eatright.org/recipes/breakfast/cranberry-almond-breakfast-cereal-recipe

https://www.eatright.org/food/planning/meals-and-snacks/power-up-with-breakfast 

https://www.eatright.org/health/essential-nutrients/carbohydrates/easy-ways-to-boost-fiber-in-your-daily-diet