Choosing a healthy breakfast cerealMisleading health claims

How healthy are cereals?

Claims for vitamins, minerals, wholegrain or fibre content are common on cereal boxes, but what manufacturers don't point out is that often, those cereals are also high in sugar, salt or saturates. So it can be tricky to tell how healthy cereals really are.

Find out how much you know about cereals by taking our quiz:

Less healthy cereals - healthy claims

All but two of the less healthy cereals made a health or nutrition claim. Most of the high-sugar and high-salt cereals, for example, had claims about their wholegrain or vitamins and iron content.

Weight loss - Several high-sugar cereals carry claims that they can help you lose weight. These include Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut and Kellogg’s Special K which invite you to ‘Take the… slimmer jeans challenge’. This involves having a bowl of the cereal for lunch or dinner
Low fat - Sainsbury’s Be Good to Yourself Balance is advertised as less than 3% fat - that's good, but it's also high in both salt and sugar
Aid concentration - High-sugar Weetabix Minis Chocolate Crisp is claimed to have ingredients that can 'help you to concentrate' and 'fibre that helps to fill you up so that you are less likely to nibble, as well as to look after your digestive system'.
Prebiotic - Weetabix Oatibix Bitesize Chocolate & Raisin contains prebiotics which, it’s claimed, ‘help keep tummies healthy’. However, it’s high in sugar
Low saturates - High-salt Whole Earth Organic Corn Flakes carry a 'low fat, low saturates' claim and says 'feel free to indulge yourself'
Vague health claims - Nestlé’s Almond Oats & More and Honey Oats & More say they will 'make it easier for you to stay healthy'
Reduced fat, but full of sugar - We found that three of the seven cereals with reduced fat claims also happened to be high in sugar. These were; Kellogg’s Special K, Kellogg’s Special K Sustain and Sainsbury’s Be Good to Yourself Balance.

GDAs and traffic light labels

We found that many recommended portion sizes were smaller than people actually eat

New research from the FSA shows that the combined label is the best way to see how much fat, sugar and salt food contains. This label uses Guideline Daily Amounts (GDAs), traffic lights and the words high medium or low. The FSA is currently carrying out a consultation on front of pack labelling.

For more on how food labelling works, see our Understanding food labelling report.

Recommended portion sizes

Another thing that makes choosing difficult is that different companies suggest different serving sizes, which are sometimes much smaller than most people really eat. The manufacturer’s serving sizes ranged from 25g to 50g. Often this varies depending on the type of cereal, but can be different for similar types of cereal too.

54 cereals recommended a 30g serving size but FSA research shows that, on average, the amounts that people actually eat are a lot more than this. For example, when eating Coco Pops-style cereals, people eat about twice as much as the suggested 30g serving size.

Children's cereal with adult GDA

To complicate things even further, some cereals that are aimed at children display the percentages of the adult GDAs, which makes them appear to be better for children than they actually are.

These include breakfast cereals from Kellogg’s, Morrisons and Tesco, as well as Sugar Puffs from Honey Monster Foods. Some of the cereals from Nestlé, Whole Earth and Dorset Cereals use the industry GDAs for 5-10 year-old children.