The Environmental Working Group, a terrific nonprofit group working to protect public health and the environment, has recently analyzed the nutrition labels of 84 kids’ cereals.
We have been following these folks for some time and respect what they do and the information that they provide to alert the public to problems in the food supply and environmental issues.
For the information and analysis directly from EWG’s website, see More Sugar Than a Twinkie .
For quick lists of the Best and Worst Children’s Cereals, click on that link.
For the original Report itself, see Sugar in Children’s Cereal. This will give you links to all these pages.
Please don’t miss Healthy Breakfast Tips, a page with lots of useful information:
- It summarizes the best and worst cereals
- Provides information on how to evaluate cereal labels
- Includes healthy breakfast tips
- Provides recipes for Hot Oatmeal, a healthy Smoothie, and Scrambled Egg and Veggie Wrap
Of course you can imagine what is contained in this report, and much of it you may not want to hear. One cup of the “worst” cereals may provide more sugar than serving your kids three cookies for breakfast. All the while, these cereals are bragging about how good they are.
Of course, kids love the worst cereals! They takes like sugar snacks, and are. Time to take the bull by the horns and say no in the supermarket when little Johnnie reaches for these pitiful excuses for breakfast.
Here are the results in a nutshell, but we recommend that you spend 15 minutes on the EWG web site to get so much more beneficial information that will help you make good decisions in the supermarket in the future.
How would you feel feeding your child one of the 10 worst children’s cereals?
| 10 Worst Children’s Cereals Based on percent sugar by weight |
|
| 1.) Kellogg’s Honey Smacks | 55.6% |
| 2.) Post Golden Crisp | 51.9% |
| 3.) Kellogg’s Froot Loops Marshmallow | 48.3% |
| 4.) Quaker Oats Cap’n Crunch’s OOPS! All Berries | 46.9% |
| 5.) Quaker Oats Cap’n Crunch Original | 44.4% |
| 6.) Quaker Oats Oh!s | 44.4% |
| 7.) Kellogg’s Smorz | 43.3% |
| 8.) Kellogg’s Apple Jacks | 42.9% |
| 9.) Quaker Oats Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries | 42.3% |
| 10.) Kellogg’s Froot Loops Original | 41.4% |
Best Cereals
Ask your store to carry these brands, which offer cereals free of pesticides
and genetically modified ingredients:
[see full list of best cereals]
- Ambrosial Granola
- Go Raw
- Grandy Oats
- Kaia Foods
- Laughing Giraffe
- Lydia’s Organic
- Nature’s Path Organics
6 Good Big-Brand Cereals
These meet nutrition guidelines and are easy to find but may include ingredients that are genetically modified or grown with pesticides:
- Kellogg’s Mini-Wheats:
Unfrosted Bite- Size,
Frosted Big Bite,
Frosted Bite-Size,
Frosted Little Bite - General Mills Cheerios Original**
- General Mills Kix Original**
