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Consumer Reports Rates Nutrition Value of Kids’ Cereals

The ever-popular Consumer Reports magazine will publish the results of a recent nutritional study of cereals children have for breakfast on a regular basis. The nutritional evaluations, available in the magazine’s November issue, rank 27 best-selling children’s cereals for overall nutritional value and categorizes them as “very good,” “good,” and “fair.”

Just four cereals earned the highest, “very good,” rank - Cheerios, Honey Nut Cheerios, Kix, and Life. These cereals are all low in sugar, high in iron, include some calcium, and supply an adequate amount of fiber. Cheerios, with just 1 gram (g) of sugar and 3 g of fiber in every serving, tops the list.

At the bottom of the list, under the “Fair” category, are Apple Jacks, Cap’n Crunch, Cap’n Crunch’s Peanut Butter Crunch, Corn Pops, Froot Loops, Golden Crisp, and Honey Smacks. These cereals contain an excess of sugar, a negligible amount of fiber, and some of them contain too much sodium (salt).

Falling somewhere in the middle are cereals similar in nutritional value to Frosted Mini-Wheats Bite Size, sweet, with 12 g of sugar, but exceptionally low in sodium and high in fiber, with 6 g per serving.

The consumer-data magazine enlisted an outside laboratory to confirm each cereal’s label regarding serving size and nutritional value. Cereals containing no more than one teaspoon per serving were categorized as low in sugar content, for the sake of this evaluation. Low-sodium cereals contain no more than 140 mg of sodium and high fiber content was measured at 5 g or more per serving. The healthier the balance of these three nutrients, the higher the rank a cereal received.

It is important for Americans to understand that nutritional value is directly related to serving size. In a Consumer Reports study of 91 children, aged 6 to 16, children poured more cereal for themselves than the serving size identified on the label. The average child pours 50% to 65% more cereal than the recommended serving size.

Many cereal manufactures sell their products in other countries and it seems as if they alter the recipe to personalize flavor to national preference, according to a Consumer Reports study of cereals sold in 32 nations. Just one very telling example is Honey Smacks, which is about 55% sugar when sold in the US but only about 40% sugar in Switzerland, Slovenia, and Germany.

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