Sugar in your cereal

Commercial cereals, ranked from best to worst

By Culinate staff

December 14, 2011

The nonprofit Environmental Working Group recently released a report ranking commercially produced breakfast cereals on their sugar levels. The EWG, which also released a list of the best and worst cereals, noted that most breakfast cereals marketed to children sport way more sugar than you might think — more than the Twinkies or Oreos that most parents refuse to let their kids eat first thing in the morning.

Don’t have time to make your offspring a home-cooked breakfast, but still want to give them a decent cereal? The EWG asked nutritionist Marion Nestle for advice, and got three shopping tips of what to look for in a packaged cereal:

• a short ingredient list (added vitamins and minerals are OK)
• high in fiber
• few or no added sugars, including honey, molasses, fruit-juice concentrate, brown sugar, corn sweetener, sucrose, lactose, glucose, high- fructose corn syrup, and malt syrup.

Got all that?