Cereals Low in Sugar

Cereals low in sugar are an important ingredient of a healthy diet, but they need to be high in fiber too. Given below are low sugar cereals and ways to identify healthy cereals.

The importance of a healthy breakfast cannot be stressed enough. A healthy breakfast provides nutrition to your body, helps you kick-start your day, and has several overall health benefits. A healthy breakfast helps adults improve their concentration and productivity. By including the right food items, like cereals low in sugar and high in fiber, in one's breakfast, one can help control weight and lower cholesterol, thus reducing (to an extent) the risk of heart diseases. A healthy diet and proper breakfast is equally crucial for children. According to the American Dietetic Association it helps them concentrate better, tackle and solve problems, improves hand-eye coordination, allows them to be more alert and creative. This translates into fewer days of missing school.

If these benefits have convinced you to start having a healthy breakfast, then you need to know what makes a breakfast healthy. If cereal is all you have the time for, the presence or lack of these three factors will dictate its health value:

Fiber: One must consume 25 gm of fiber per day, out of which, 5 grams or at least 3 grams, must come from your breakfast cereal. To ensure this, read through the list of ingredients and pick cereals which are high in fiber, and contain 5 - 3 grams of fiber per serving.
Sugar: As most cereals have added sugar, you need to steer clear of the highly sugary ones. The healthy ones are cereals low in sugar, which contain 13 grams or less of sugar, per serving.
Calories: If you are on a low calorie diet, or are working towards losing weight, choose those cereals that have lower calories, ideally less than 120 calories per serving.

If you want to consume cereals low in sugar, there are a few other facts that you must be made aware of. A recent study from Yale University's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity has confirmed that most breakfast cereals advertised, keeping kids as their target audience, are full of sugar and low in fiber. The fact that is both troubling and astounding are these: cereals marketed to kids have 85% more sugar, 65% less fiber and 60% more sodium than those, aimed at adults. They also found that:

Cereal companies spend more than USD 56 million a year marketing to children. On an average, a preschooler sees 642 TV cereal ads a year. Unfortunately, most of these cereals have the worst nutrition ratings.
The cereal lowest in nutrition are often the ones most aggressively marketed to children. These include Reese's Puffs, Lucky Charms, Corn Pops, Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Cap'n Crunch.
Another factor parents must be alert to, is that some of the products with the poorest nutrition ratings came with health claims!
The good news is that the major cereal companies do have good nutritious products. However only a few of these are advertisements are targeted at children.

Best Breakfast Cereals Low in Sugar:

A nutritious breakfast cereal is Mighty Bites Honey Crunch Cereal by Kashi. It contains only 5 grams of sugar and 3 grams of dietary fiber per serving. Additionally, it also has 15 vitamins and minerals. It is a good option for kids as it is tasty, but yet not too sweet.
Another of the low sugar cereals is, Gorilla Munch Organic Cereal by Envirokids, which is not only healthy, but also gluten-free. Slightly sweeter than Mighty Bites, it contains eight grams of sugar and two grams of dietary fiber.
A very healthy option, Soy and Flax Clusters by Trader Joe's, is fairly sweet yet within the 'healthy' limit. It has 12 grams of sugar per serving, six grams of dietary fiber, and is loaded with Omega-3's.
A very good option among the cereals low in sugar is the Frosted Vanilla Shredded Bite Size Wheats by Trader Joe's. While you might think that the 12 grams of sugar per serving is a little sweet, it does have 5 grams of fiber per serving. It is also fortified with nine vitamins and minerals.

Recipient Email Address:
	Separate multiple email addresses by ;
Your Name:
Your Email Address: