Healthiest Cereal to Eat

Since breakfast is the most important meal of the day, make sure your cereal is up to the challenge of getting your day off to a nutritious start. Cereal is a quick and convenient choice and a potentially healthy one, depending on your selection. Your cereal should provide the correct amounts of certain nutrients for it to qualify as one of the healthiest cereals to eat.

Consider the Facts

Look beyond the marketing efforts of cereal manufacturers and claims about nutrition on the front of the box, and consider the facts instead. Read the nutrition label and the ingredients list to determine if a cereal is really healthy. Cereal manufacturers spend upward of $150 million per year marketing to children, and health is not their primary concern. Kid's cereals aren't the only unhealthy ones, but they do contain 85 percent more sugar, 60 percent more sodium and 65 percent less fiber on average than cereals for adults, according to Cereal Facts, a project of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity Research at Yale University.

Whole Grains and Fiber

The healthiest cereals are made from whole grains that contain the fiber, vitamins and minerals that refined grains lack. The fiber in whole grains lowers cholesterol, prevents heart disease and helps you to feel full longer, which aids in weight management. Choose a breakfast cereal that contains at least 3 g of fiber and is made from whole grains. The only way to tell if a cereal contains whole grains is to read the ingredient list -- the first ingredient must be a whole grain, such as whole wheat, whole grain corn, whole oats or oatmeal. Adults should get at least 25 g of fiber each day from whole grains, fruits and vegetables.

Sugar

The healthiest breakfast cereals are low in sugar. Some cereals are 40 percent sugar or more, and a couple of the worst offenders contain food coloring and artificial flavors. Read nutrition labels and choose a cereal that has 8 g of sugar or less per serving. The American Heart Association recommends limiting added sugar to decrease the risk of heart disease and diabetes. Some of the main sources of added sugars are processed and packaged foods, such as cereal. Added sugars don't include the sugars that are naturally present in foods such as milk or fruit. Men are advised to limit added sugar to 9 tsp., or 36 g, per day and women are advised to limit it to 6 g, or 24 tsp., per day.

Other Considerations

The healthiest cereals don't contain food dyes or artificial sweeteners. Healthy cereals average 100 to 200 calories per serving, along with at least 2 g of protein and less than 3 g of fat. Read ingredients to look for partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, which is the name for unhealthy trans fat, and avoid any cereal that contains it. Healthy cereal has between 10 and 25 percent of the recommended daily allowances for important vitamins and minerals, such as vitamins B-6 and B-12, iron and folate.