Review: Weet-Bix Bites

We recently asked you what cereals you wanted us to review....

The number one request was "Weet-Bix Bites"!  So we have put our new resource on 'Choosing Cereals for Toddlers' to the test (you can check it out here) and reviewed it for you!

What is in it?

Wholegrain wheat (68%), sugar, invert sugar, humectant (glycerol), berry purees (3%) (strawberry, blackcurrant, raspberry and blueberry), honey, salt, wheat fibre, flavours, barley malt extract, gelling agent (pectin), acid (malic, citric), vitamins (niacin, thiamin, riboflavin, folate), mineral (iron).

Allergens

Contains: gluten, wheat.

​Cost: $1.20 per 100g

Compared to:

• Regular Weet-bix at $0.50- $0.70 per 100g.
• Little Kid's Weet-Bix at $1.13 per 100g.
• Most cereals range from $0.50-$3.00 per 100g.

What we like:

• Moderate sodium- not low but not high either (290mg per 100g)
• Fibre- more than 3g per serve of fibre (3.8g per serve)
• 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)

What we like less:

• It is high in sugar with 21.8g per 100g. 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). A lot of this is coming from added sugar and not the fruit either as there is only 3% fruit puree in this product. Sugar is listed high up in the ingredient list and it also has added honey. 

Let's compare this to other cereals:

• 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 Cereals (23.9g per 100g)
• Fruity Bites (22.3g per 100g)
• Nutrigrain (24g per 100g)
• Cocopops (32.2g per 100g)

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- 10g 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!
• It contains honey- so not suitable for children under the age of 1.

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, if there are other options your kids will go for that have less added sugar then try to offers those as well.

These might be better: added into other lower sugar cereals, crushed and served in yoghurt or served dry in a lunch box as part of a school snack.