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Are Cheerios A Healthy Cereal? | Ask The Fitness Nerd

January 31, 2009 on 12:26 pm | By Matt | In Ask The Fitness Nerd | 11 Comments

Are Cheerios a Healthy Cereal Choice? We Take A Look At The Nutritional Profile of One Of America’s Favorite Cereals and Let You Decide.

Dear Fitness Nerd,

Are Cheerios a healthy cereal? I’m trying to eat breakfast more often, but I don’t care for oatmeal. I do love Cheerios, however. But I’m not sure if they are a healthy choice. Fat is low and they don’t seem to have many calories. What’s your opinion? Is there a better cereal out there instead? – Carolyn (Portland, Maine)

The “healthiness” of cereals and foods is often relative. Same goes for Cheerios.

For example, if you are regularly skipping breakfast and then grabbing a bagel and cream cheese at the office, a bowl of Cheerios with skim milk would be a much better option from a nutrition standpoint than your usual choices in the morning.  So from that perspective, Cheerios are a healthy cereal — or at least healthier in comparison to the bagel and cream cheese.

On the other hand, given the choice between eating Cheerios or a whole food, unprocessed source of complex carbohydrates in the morning like oatmeal, oat bran or homemade muesli, the Cheerios doesn’t fare quite as well.

Let’s take a quick look at what Cheerios has going for it nutritionally, and what some of its weaknesses are compared to other whole food sources of breakfast grains.

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