Nutrition of breakfast cereals

Breakfast has been long recognized for its important contribution to the nutrient intake of both adults and children. Breakfast cereals are crucial because they constitute the first meal of the day.

And they are considered highly nutritious because they do not contain significant amounts of fat and do contain important quantities of essential vitamins and minerals and are almost always served with milk, which complements their nutritional value.

Eating a cereal breakfast with milk is an effective way to increase calcium intake, which is an important mineral for children and teenagers for the development of strong bones and teeth.

Breakfast cereals are a good source of complex carbohydrates which include starch, NSP and resistant starch; many breakfast cereals are also fortified with a range of vitamins and minerals.

For example, some breakfast cereals are fortified with B-vitamins, iron and sometimes calcium, making significant contribution to the dietary intake of these micronutrients. Fortified breakfast cereals provide on quarter of total iron intakes among young people.

Fortified breakfast cereals are the single source of iron in the young person diet, providing more iron that meat and meat products, breads or vegetables.

The average antioxidant content of the breakfast cereals was higher that of the fruits and vegetables, except for berries. The antioxidant content of whole-grain cereal with raisins was only slightly lower than that of berries.
Nutrition of breakfast cereals