Creating a Healthy Breakfast Cereal
Often times you hear “breakfast is the most important meal of the day”. I am a firm believer that this tagline is true. Breakfast is the meal that our body wakes up to. It kick starts our metabolism and sets the tone for our eating habits throughout the day. Some of the breakfast options out there on the shelves these days are so discouraging to see as a dietitian. Cinnamon Toast Crunch? Trix? Coco Puffs? Go-Gurt? All of these claiming to have some sort of nutritional benefit. When you look at the labels, “sugar” is in the top two ingredients in all of these. Remember that ingredients are listed by weight. The first ingredient is the predominant ingredient in the food item. When purchasing these foods, I cannot stress the importance of reading the nutrition labels enough. I am a firm believer that we are what we eat. Sugar has absolutely NO nutritional value, none whatsoever.
Cereal can be a simple, convenient way to start your day off right. But it’s so easy to buy the wrong kind. A good breakfast cereal should abide by the rule of 4’s:
- Contain as few ingredients as possible AND you should know what all of these ingredients are
- Contain 4g of sugar or less (preferably none!)
- Contain at least 4g of fiber or more- top off with fresh fruit and ground chia or flax to increase the fiber content
- Contain at least 4g of protein- top off with ground chia or flax to increase protein content
One thing I like to do to pump up my breakfast cereal is to add a small amount (2TBS) of another high protein and fiber cereal blend. By adding a blend of Chia, Buckwheat and Hemp to your regular cereal, you are not only bumping up the fiber and protein content, but you are adding an additional nutritional boost of Omega 3 fatty acids and iron. You can find cereal blends like these through online vendors (such as Amazon), health food stores such as Whole Foods or the Natural/Organic section of larger supermarkets or simply create your own. Although the blends are great and will add an additional nutritious, flavorful crunch- plain Chia or ground flax seed is also an excellent addition for a breakfast cereal to boost protein, fiber and healthy fat content. Another alternative is to add a handful of unsalted nuts to your cereal. Ground Almonds or crushed walnuts will also add more fiber, protein, healthy fats and vitamins and minerals. Remember to look at your serving sizes! The serving size for most breakfast cereals is usually around ¾ cup, but they all vary. Try adding any of these recommended nutritional powerhouses to plain, yogurt instead of milk for an additional nutritious enhancement of protein and healthy, gut friendly bacteria. Top this breakfast off with some sliced fresh fruit and you will be starting your day off on the right foot! Enjoy!!
Very helpful post, thank you! Can you tell us some of the pre-made cereals you buy that follow these guidelines? Also, I’m assuming that one should eat only one serving of cereal- how much yogurt do you recommend pairing it with? Thanks! Looking forward to more of your posts!
Thank you! Yes, one that I really enjoy is made by Nature’s Path, Qia Superfood. http://shop.naturespath.com/Qia-Superfood–Chia-Buckwheat-and-Hemp-Cereal–Original-Flavor/p/NPA-320050&[email protected]
It has Chia, Buckwheat and Hemp in it. The serving size is only 2 TBS and contains 4g of fiber and 6g of protein. Yes, definitely stick to the serving size of the cereal you might add it to so you can boost the nutritional content. As far as yogurt goes, I always recommend a plain yogurt. A greek yogurt will have a higher protein content than regular but either yogurt will be lacking fiber. Which is why I recommend adding one serving of this cereal to the yogurt along with some fresh cut fruit to add even more nutritional value. I recommend this as a breakfast because it will certainly contain adequate calories, fiber and protein which will help keep you satiated for the morning and provide you a great start to your day =)
Another superfood breakfast cereal that you could look into is: Go Raw Live Granola http://www.goraw.com/p/70/live-granola
It is higher in caloric contribution so either minimize your regular cereal or cut the serving size of this one in half.
With both cereal recommendations, be sure to buy the original flavors to keep the sugar content down. Hope this helped!!
Fantastic post, thanks for all the info! I have just started using chia seeds, so far, so good! I am guilty of giving my kids flavored yogurt (yes go-gurt is one of them 🙂 have you come across any flavored yogurts that are kid friendly/not too high in sugar. Not sure if this even exists, but maybe you have some insight! My pediatrician has stressed the importance of yogurt daily for the kids as it helps with all the germs they are constantly carrying around, but they just aren’t fans of plain yogurt. Help!
Hi! Thank you. I am so happy to hear that your pediatrician has stressed the importance of yogurt on a daily basis. Yes, yogurt is a pro-biotic, it helps boost our immune system with its beneficial bacteria benefits. Which is why the first ingredients listed after “milk” on a good quality yogurt should read “live active cultures”. A plain yogurt will contain some sugar due to the lactose (milk sugar) in the milk. I compared 3 different popular brands of plain yogurt- note the serving sizes: Fage Plain Greek 8 oz serving has 9g sugar, Stonyfield Farms Organic Plain 8oz has 12g sugar, Chobani Plain non-fat greek yogurt 6oz has 7g sugar. Just to provide a frame of reference, the 4oz containers of the “Yo Kids” from Stonyfield Farms have 13g of Sugar and the second ingredient listed is” Naturally Milled Organic Sugar” (strawberry/banana flavor), Chobani’s Blood Orange non-fat Greek yogurt has 19g of sugar in 6oz (first ingredient in fruit on the bottom is evaporated cane juice, but live active cultures are listed right up there with the milk), and Fage’s 0% fat Greek yogurt with peach contains 16g in 5 oz (sugar is second ingredient listed after peaches in the fruit preparation and the live active cultures are listed right up there with the milk). So the brand really makes a difference when evaluating sugar content. I think its useful to know that some sugar will be there regardless due to the lactose content.
All that being said, finding a flavored low-sugar yogurt that is kid-friendly is not an easy task! Stonyfield Farms kid friendly brands use fruit juice for flavoring and consistently list sugar as the second ingredient, grams of sugar averages around 13g for 4oz serving. Their fruit on the bottom blends use the actual fruit and most of them list the fruit as the second ingredient. Grams of sugar seems to be around 22g for a 6oz serving.
I have created another blog post on my version of the “Go-Gurt”- I invite you to try it out! It was kid approved-and not just by my own daughter 😉
Thanks Jamie, the homemade go-gurt looks like a fantastic idea!