Choosing a healthy breakfast cerealThe healthiest breakfast cereals

A healthy breakfast?

A good breakfast is an important start to the day, but your cereal might not be as healthy as you think. In fact, of the 100 cereals we looked at in January 2009, only eight received a green traffic light rating for sugar content, while 59 received red.

We bought the 100 top selling cereals to find out how much fat, saturates, sugar and salt each contained and applied the Food Standard Agency's (FSA) traffic light system where possible.

Good for children

We also used the FSA's nutrient profiling scheme which is designed to determine which foods should and should not be targeting children through TV advertising. Anything that scores too highly, for being low on nutrients and too high on calories, saturated fats, salt and sugars, is classed 'less healthy' and so advertising restrictions apply.

You can read more about what is and isn't allowed in our How How TV food advertising restrictions work report.

The best and worst cereals

Use our cereal picker to find out which cereals you should choose if you're trying to keep your salt, sugar or fat intake down, and those to avoid.

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Breakfast cereals - full results

To see the full results for all 100 cereals or to read about our findings in more detail in the 'Going Against the Grain' download the pdfs below:

Full results and cereals report

Cereal nutrition - full results (PDF: 80Kb)

Sugar, salt, fat and saturate nutritional information for the top 100 cereals on the market in the UK

29 April 2009
Going Against the Grain (PDF: 624Kb)

Read the full cereals report

29 April 2009