Breakfast Cereal

Food · Grain · Food, Typed Supps

Two cereals can sit side by side on the same shelf and be almost nothing alike.

Stage by stage

Intake (Softened by milk): Milk rehydrates an already-cooked flake, biscuit or puff, so little chewing is needed.
Digestion (Starch broken down quickly): Pre-gelatinised starch is digested rapidly, faster than the same grain cooked at home.
Absorption (Glucose and added minerals): Glucose enters the blood quickly; added iron and B vitamins are absorbed here as fortificants.
Large bowel (Fibre bulks or ferments): Bran fibre bulks the stool and speeds transit; a puffed rice cereal leaves almost nothing to do this with.

Time to effect

Under an hour: Blood glucose from a flaked or puffed cereal peaks within roughly 30 to 45 minutes.

Allergens

None of the fourteen major allergens. May contain: Gluten. 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, Gluten-free.

Satiety

113 on the satiety index, where white bread is 100 — moderate. Modelled from the Holt et al. (1995) measurements.

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

Dietary fibre
Added iron and B vitamins
Added sugars

Nutrition per 100g

Calories: 372
Protein: 7.3g
Carbohydrate: 75.6g
of which sugars: 7.7g
Fat: 2.9g
of which saturated: 0.4g
Fibre: 4.6g
Sodium: 270mg

Food vs. supplement

Fortified breakfast cereal is Australia's most widely eaten iron and folate supplement, delivered as added elemental iron and synthetic B vitamins rather than anything the grain brought with it. An unfortified cereal supplies neither.

Kitchen tip

Compare fibre and sugars per 100g, not per serve — declared serve sizes across this family range from 30g to 50g, which flatters the lighter cereals.

Common myth

“If it is made from whole grain, it is a whole-grain food.” In reality: Milling, cooking, extruding and re-forming a grain leaves the fibre and the starch structure very different from the intact grain. That is why fibre across this family spans roughly 1g to 30g per 100g while the grain listed on the front of the box often reads the same.