How much cereal should we be eating?

Do you fill up a bowl of cereal every morning for your breakfast? Although most of us opt for this tasty start to the day, it’s been revealed that most of us are consuming up to three times more than the recommended amount of cereal every morning - but how much should we be eating?

According to research carried out by Wren Kitchen’s in their Behind the Label Experiment, us Brits are pouring over double the amount of cereal we should be into our cereal bowls every morning, with the average bowl in the experiment weighing 73g rather than 30g what they should weigh.

The research comes as it’s been revealed that we consume more than a kilo of sugar a week (238 teaspoons). This has meant the government are now cracking down on manufacturers with new industry guidelines to reduce the amount of sugar in their food products.

How much cereal do we put in a bowl?

The Behind the Label experiment asked participants to pour their regular breakfast bowl of cereal into either a small (standard soup) sized bowl or a larger dinner bowl.

The experiment reveals the average weight of each cereal poured during the experiment and what this looks like in sugar – showing how misleading the nutritional information on cereal packets can be based on often unrealistic portion weights labelled.

How much cereal SHOULD we put in a bowl?

The Results

The average portion of Special K Original poured throughout the experiment (93g) is over THREE TIMES the guided portion size - making the average bowl 351 calories and 14g of sugar – that’s more sugar than an Original Glazed Krispy Kreme doughnut (12.6g)

The average bowl of Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut poured was 78g (over double the guided portion size) -bringing the bowls sugar content to 28.46g (over 7 cubes of sugar) and the equivalent of nearly 2 and a half Original Glazed Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut Granola has the highest sugar content based on the guided portion size (12g to every 45g portion). However, the average bowl poured throughout the experiment was nearly double this (82g), making the average bowl a hefty 389 calories and 21.84g of sugar (or 5.5 cubes) - that's the equivalent sugar content of nearly 2 Original Glazed Krispy Kreme doughnuts

Lucky Charms have the smallest guided portion size at just 27g. However, participants throughout the experiment poured an average bowl of 62g (over double the recommended) - meaning the average bowl contained 22.81g of sugar (or 5.7 cubes) and 251 calories

Alpen Original has one of the highest sugar contents amongst the cereals within the experiment with the avg. portion poured nearly double that of the guided portion size (82.5g to the guided 45g) - meaning the average portion contains 17.4g of sugar and 308 calories - the same sugar as nearly 1 and a half Original Glazed Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Although some of the sugar within Alpen is naturally occurring within the raisins, sugar is added to the ingredients.

We’d love to know which cereal you have for breakfast - Let us know over on our Facebook page and Twitter page.

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