Bran Flakes (Fortified)

Food · Grain · Food, Typed Supps

Nineteen grams of fibre and almost a full day of iron — most of it added.

Stage by stage

Fortified (The box): The iron, folate and B vitamins were added at manufacture, not grown.
Fibre (Colon): 19.3 g per 100 g; around 8 g in a 40 g bowl.
Non-haem iron (Duodenum): 16.95 mg per 100 g, absorbed at 2–20% depending on what is drunk with it.
Sodium (Systemic): 360 mg per 100 g — modest per bowl, and rarely counted.

Timing

Vitamin C with it, tea and coffee well away from it. The added iron is non-haem and the meal decides how much you get.

Time to effect

Weeks–months: Iron status responds, given favourable meal conditions.
Per 40 g bowl: About 8 g fibre, 6.8 mg iron and 135 mcg folate.

Allergens

Contains: Gluten. May contain: Tree nuts. Derived from what this food is, not from a product label.

Eating patterns

Fits: Vegan, Vegetarian, Pescatarian, Halal, Kosher. Depends on the product: Low-FODMAP.

Satiety

151 on the satiety index, where white bread is 100 — high. Measured by Holt et al. (1995).

Environmental footprint

1.6 kg CO2e and 648 litres of freshwater per kg, matched to "Wheat & rye" in Poore & Nemecek (2018), Science 360.

Cost band

Cheap — roughly £2.5 per kg, as a band midpoint rather than a price.

Key nutrients

Fibre
Iron
Folate

Nutrition per 100g

Calories: 353
Protein: 12.2g
Carbohydrate: 58.4g
of which sugars: 11g
Fat: 3.6g
of which saturated: 0.6g
Fibre: 19.3g
Sodium: 360mg

Food vs. supplement

For someone eating little meat, a fortified cereal often delivers more usable iron than the diet would otherwise supply — which makes what you drink with breakfast a more consequential decision than it looks.

Kitchen tip

Have juice with it and tea afterwards, not at the same time. That one change moves iron absorption more than switching cereal would.

Common myth

“Bran flakes are iron-rich because bran is iron-rich.” In reality: Bran does carry iron, and most of the 16.95 mg per 100 g here was added at the factory. That is a good thing — fortified cereal is one of the better iron vehicles for people eating little meat. But it is non-haem iron, absorbed at 2 to 20%, and a cup of tea with breakfast can cut that substantially while orange juice raises it.

In the glossary

Absorption