Pros and Con of Cereals for breakfast

QUEEN SEREM

April 25, 2025 2 min read

Fortified breakfast cereals can be a useful source of fibre, vitamins and minerals – but some are considered ultra-processed food.

We're often told that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Get this decision right and your nutritious morning meal can help keep you energised and focused for whatever challenges come your way. Yet the choice of what to eat for breakfast – or what to give your children if you have them – can feel overwhelming at times.

If, like 53% of the US population you decide to go the breakfast cereal route every week, then you can take your pick. There's porridge oats, granola, muesli, bran flakes, corn flakes, and puffed rice – the options are endless, with each colourful box promising to deliver a healthy, nutritious meal. Yet, although breakfast cereals have traditionally been seen this way, some scientists warn that these are ultra-processed snacks – and they are not actually good for us at all.

So, what is the truth, and what kind of cereals – if any – should we be eating?

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First off, some facts. Cereals are grasses from the Poaceae family, cultivated for their edible seeds, or grains. Cereal crops include wheat, rice, oats, barley and corn. Each cereal grain has three main edible components. There's the outer layer of bran, which is rich in fibre, B vitamins and trace minerals. Then there's the endosperm, which is packed with starch and proteins to support the developing plant embryo. Finally, the germ contains the embryo, and is rich in oils, vitamins and minerals.

One of the first people to come up with the idea of turning grains into breakfast cereals was John Harvey Kellogg, an American physician. At the time he was a superintendent of the Battle Creek Sanatarium – a kind of hybrid between a hospital and a health resort. To improve the patients' diet, Kellogg developed, patented and introduced a variety of new foods, including Granola and Corn Flakes. However, these have now become so ubiquitous that there are dozens of generic versions on the market.