Review: Kellogg’s Rice Bubbles

Let's review- Kellogg's Rice Bubbles

What is in it?

Whole white rice (91%), sugar, salt, barley malt extract, minerals (iron, zinc oxide), vitamins (niacin, riboflavin, vitamin B6, folate).

Allergens

Contains: gluten

May contain: wheat, peanut, tree nuts

​Cost: $1.16-$1.59 per 100g

Compared to:

• Regular Weet-bix at $0.50- $0.70 per 100g.
• Little Kid's Weet-Bix at $1.13 per 100g
• Fruity Bites $1.59 per 100g
• Coles Rice Puffs $0.78 per 100g
• Coles Corn Flakes $0.48 per 100g
• Most cereals range from $0.50-$3.00 per 100g.

What we like:

• Pretty low in sugar- with only 8.4g per 100g it falls into the moderate category for sugar. When selecting cereals we ideally want less than 15g to keep it in the low to moderate range (less than 5g per 100g is low and less than 15g is moderate). Very few cereals fall into the "low" category though!
• It has added iron (3mg per serve) which is great for our kiddos that don't like meat and struggle to get iron rich foods into their diet over the day
• Low in saturated fat (0.2g per 100g) which we would expect for a breakfast cereal. 

What we like less:

• High sodium- with 420mg per 100g!!! This is much higher than most cereals we have looked at. We want to aim for cereals with less than 400mg per 100g and as close to or lower than 120mg per 100g is best.

In comparison:

• Kellogg's Rice Bubbles Multigrain Berry Flavour have 140mg per 100g of sodium
• Vita Brits have 395mg per 100g of sodium
• Uncle Tobys Vanilla O’s Low Sugar Cheerios have 285mg per 100g of sodium
• Weet-Bix  have 270mg per 100g of sodium
• Weet-Bix  Little Kids Essentials have 10mg per 100g of sodium

• Lower in fibre than we would like- it only has 2.3g per serve and we would like to see it above 3g. 
• The claims about containing "6 vitamins and mineral"- while true, other than the iron, the others aren't really worth writing home about. It just feels like another marketing tactic to try to get parents to feel like it is healthier and buy it.  

Other things to consider:

• This won't matter for most families but, for our dairy and soy free kids looking for a calcium boost there is no added calcium in these.
• Protein- 7.4g per 100g of protein. This may be useful for some families, but most children in Australia easily meet if not exceed their protein requirements so parents don't need to go looking for ways to add more in!

The Take Home: 

Whether this is a good breakfast option for your family really does depend on your individual needs! If you have a picky eater that loves these or struggles to get iron rich foods in over the day these might be a good option for you.

However, because of the high amount of added salt, these wouldn't be our first choice for cereal if there are other options your kids will eat.

These might be better: added into other lower sodium cereals or crushed and served in yoghurt.

If you want to learn how to review cereals yourself, check out our new resource on 'Choosing Cereals for Toddlers' (you can check it out here)!