What’s In Your Kid’s Cereal?

Would you feed your kids a Twinkie for breakfast? How about three chocolate chip cookies? No? Well, you might be giving them the equivalent in sugar if you’re feeding them cereal, according to the Environmental Working Group. EWG’s review of 84 popular cereal brands, just released yesterday, shows that only one in four children’s cereals meets the government panel’s voluntary proposed guidelines, which recommend no more than 26 percent added sugar by weight.

Kellogg’s Honey Smacks leads the list of the top 10 worst cereals, at nearly 56 percent sugar by weight. One cup of the crunchy stuff serves up more sugar than a Hostess Twinkie. But Honey Smacks isn’t alone. A one-cup serving of forty-four other popular brands had more sugar than three Chips Ahoy cookies. Here’s a look at the best and worst 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%

For the full list of all 84 brands, click here.

BEST CEREALS

These cereals are also free of pesticides and genetically modified ingredients:

• Ambrosial Granola: Athenian Harvest Muesli
• Go Raw: Live Granola, Live Chocolate Granola, and Simple Granola
• Grandy Oats: Mainely Maple Granola, Cashew Raisin Granola, and Swiss Style Muesli
• Kaia Foods: Buckwheat Granola Dates & Spices and Buckwheat Granola Raisin Cinnamon

• Laughing Giraffe: Cranberry Orange Granola
• Lydia’s Organics: Apricot Sun, Berry Good, Grainless Apple, Sprouted Cinnamon, and Vanilla Crunch.
• Nature’s Path Organic: Optimum Banana Almond, Optimum Cranberry Ginger, Corn Puffs, Kamut Puffs, Millet Puffs, and Rice Puffs.

My advice? For breakfast, stick with fruit, oatmeal, eggs and my favorite—bacon. After all, this is a post about sugar, not fat and sodium 😉

Tags: best, cereals, kids, sugar, worst