Review: Kellogg’s Nutrigrain

Let's review- Kellogg's Nutrigrain

What is in it?

Cereals (51%)(wheat flour, oatmeal [contains oats], maize flour), sugar, wheat protein, maltodextrin, molasses, oat fibre, vegetable gum (acacia gum), salt, barley malt extract, minerals (calcium carbonate, iron, zinc oxide), raising agent (potassium bicarbonate), natural flavours, natural colours (paprika, turmeric), vitamins (niacin, vitamin B6, riboflavin, folate).

Allergens

Contains: Contains wheat gluten.

May contain: peanut, tree nuts.

​Cost: $1.41-$2.41 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:

• 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 (0.5g per 100g) which we would expect for a breakfast cereal. 
• Good amount of fibre- with 5.3g per serve ( we like to see it above 3g). 
• Added Calcium- with 200mg per 100g. So this is worth noting for our dairy free families that are looking for foods to boost the calcium intake. However, there are other ways to do this too and considering the high sugar and salt in this product it wouldn't be a "go-to" option that we would suggest for most families looking for fortified calcium products. Instead- go check out the Weet-Bix Little Kid's Essentials or Uncle Toby's Cheerios Low Sugar Vanilla Flavoured O's.

What we like less:

• High sodium- while 350mg per 100g is still within the recommendations it is still pretty high.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:

• 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
• Kellogg's Bright Start Corn Flakes Honey Flavour have 195g per 100g sodium
• Weet-Bix Bites Berry Flavour have 290mg per 100g of sodium

• High in added sugar- with 24g per 100g! This means almost 25% of the cereal is 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). 

Let's compare this to other cereals:

• Weet-Bix Little Kid's Essentials (2.9g per 100g)
• Weet-Bix (3g per 100g)
• Cheerios Low Sugar  (4.1g per 100g)
• Rice bubbles (8.4g per 100g)
• Corn Flakes (8.9g per 100g)
• Cheerios Original (14.6g per 100g)
• Milo Cereal (23.9g per 100g)
• Fruity Bites (22.3g per 100g)
• Cocopops (32.2g per 100g)

Other things to consider:

• Protein- 21.8g 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 and sugar, these wouldn't be our first choice for cereal if there are other options your kids will eat.

These might be better: Added into lunch boxes or alongside morning tea as part of a snack.

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)!