I received a message from a PR company last week about a new cereal, asking for a review. It was laden with sugar and I said I would only have this if I had just finished a 3 hour bike ride! Anyway I got to thinking what is the healthiest breakfast cereal?

I had a look in the calorie carb bible book to see if there are any decent cereals with good macronutrient levels.

My criteria were for an optimal breakfast are.

20g Protein
50g Carb
10g Fat
per 100g

Rather than try and get the nation eating eggs for breakfast I thought why not try and meet people where they are at and see what is the best formulation available and recommend that.

I was SHOCKED at how few cereals came close to my ideal, with most having protein levels of around 4g per 100g. The best really is plain old oats, quinoa flakes or barley flakes.

They are typically around.

Pro      11g
Carbs  60g
Fat      8 g
per 100g

Most of the cereals have low levels of protein around 6-10g per 100g and higher levels of carbs up to around 80g  and the ones that often look healthier from the box are quite high in fat and low in protein up to around 30g of fat (fat is coming from nuts and sunflower seeds rather than flax seeds and chia seeds which are higher in omega 3 oils).

These were the only 2 that came close to what I think would be OK and they are by no means perfect. If you wanted to buy a commercially produced cereal then get one of these and add some protein powder to it and you would get pretty close to the ideal macronutrient profile.
Honey Granola
This one is good for protein and carbs but high for fat.

Protein  13g
Carbs     51g
Fat          25g
Perfekt Organic Quinoa Granola

This one was better as it was lower in carbs. It is still high in fat and also has agave syrup (not great), sunflower seeds  and rapeseed oil ( not the best sources of fat)

pro  12g
carb 49g
fat    16g

So i started playing around with some ratios and ingredients this was the mix I came up with

Gavin’s  Optimal Breakfast Cereal

Oats                             56 g
Whey Protein            15g
Chia Seeds                  3g
Flax seeds                   3g
Almonds                     3g
Cocoa Nibs                2g
Dried Blueberries      8g
Honey                         8g
Cinnamon                  1g

Comes in at

Protein 20g
Carbs 50g
Fat 11g

What I have done is to multiply the ingredients (- the honey) by 10 and store it in an airtight container. Tastes great either as a porridge or just with milk as a muesli. Tell me what you think, we might have to go into production!!!