Contents
Is there a healthy breakfast cereal?
Food
In addition to not getting carried away by the “decoration” of the cereal box, we must pay attention to the ingredients and avoid added sugars
Each filtering bag breakfast cereals They have always been a food present in the pantries of the Spanish or, if not, raise your hand who has not ever had a bowl of milk with cereals for breakfast thinking that this was the ideal and healthiest breakfast. What’s more, almost always on social networks we find the same brawl: in the bowl, do we pour the milk or the cereals first? But the crux of the matter is not in the order of food but in whether or not this breakfast is labeled healthy by nutrition experts.
And the answer is negative … As Marta Moreno, dietician-nutritionist of the Núkula team (@ nuku.la), a mobile application to learn how to make a healthy purchase, tells us, cereals are nothing more than a «mixture of sugar, fat from poor quality and refined flours ». And in the same vein, Antonio Rodríguez, from sinAzucar.org, thinks: «Most consumers refer to« cereals »as those flakes or balls to add to the breakfast milk that comes in cardboard boxes full of striking colors and claims I don’t know how many vitamins and minerals“, He says. According to the expert in sugary foods, many forget the real cereals, such as oatmeal: “We can find it in most supermarkets in flakes and it is an excellent option to add it to milk or yogurt.”
How to choose a good cereal
The first thing to do with any packaged product – whether they are cereals or not – is to look at the ingredients, because since June 2019 the industry is required to indicate the% of whole wheat flour in the product: «I recommend that the cereal you choose have at least 80% whole wheat flour to make sure the cereal is good, “says nutrition expert Marta Moreno.
Another point to take into account is the animated cartoons that we find on the package … «We must not get carried away by the packaging. Puppies, bees, unicorns and other cute pets are often the indicator of nutritionally uninteresting cereals. And we should not be influenced by the lists of vitamins and minerals either. If you want nutrients, eat fruit and vegetables. Breakfast cereals are not the best source of health, ”says Antonio Rodríguez.
In addition, the Nukula nutritionist advises identifying if it has added sugar, which is not an easy task considering that most of the time they do not indicate the word “sugar”, but instead put fructose, maltodextrin, honey, brown sugar, concentrated … “If you identify one of these ingredients go to the nutritional information and identify the amount of free sugar in the product. You will find it in Carbohydrates of which some are sugars, and try to ensure that these are less than 5 grams per 100 grams of product, “he recommends.
«If when reading the label of some breakfast cereals We found ingredients that our grandmother would not know, better to put them back on the shelf. And if it has sugar among its ingredients, it is better to forget about them », alerts Antonio Rodríguez (@sinazucarorg).
Finally, another way to know if the cereals that we are going to buy are healthy or not is to use an app that shows in an easier way what the ingredients are and if they have added sugar. The experts of the OCU (Organization of Consumers and Users) recommend one: «The fastest way would be the NutriScore system if it were in all products to be able to compare breakfast cereals of the same category – that is, chocolate cereals with each other, etc. – and thus opt for the healthiest within the same category ». But here the creator of sinAzucar.org differs because he assures that there are some cereals, «such as those of Nesquik o Chocapic Bio, which contain approximately 25% sugar ”.
Cereals every day?
Do you fill your juice or milk bowl with cereal every day? Apparently, this is not a good option because the key to a healthy diet is in the variety of products with little or no processed present in the diet: «It is not advisable to take them daily, in the same way that it is not advisable to eat brown rice every day. Although they are the healthiest breakfast cereals, prepared at home from oats, whole wheat flakes, nuts, seeds, etc., breakfast has to follow the same premise as the other meals of the day: variety “, conclude the OCU experts.