By Julie Murphree, Arizona Farm Bureau Outreach Director
My dad loves breakfast cereal. However, he doesn’t buy the popular boxed cereal you can find in the grocery store and certainly not those containing sugar. Instead, he’ll purchase raw granola, sliced almonds and crumbled walnuts and mix it all together on the morning he prepares breakfast. He’ll top off his bowl with a variety of fresh fruit, usually bananas or sliced strawberries.
But what if you don’t want to go to all that trouble for a simple bowl of cereal? The convenience of cereal can often make us lazy about what we select. But you can find healthy cereal choices in the cereal section of your local grocer.
In a recent issue of Healthline, popular and convenient, store-bought breakfast cereals often contain added sugar and are low in fiber and protein, suggests registered dietitian Brianna Elliott, who shares suggestions for making good cereal choices at home and at the grocery store. Oats, DIY muesli, homemade granola and DIY peanut butter puffs and cinnamon crunch cereal as well as cauliflower oatmeal are among the nutritious options she recommends, and some store-bought choices are packed with wholesome ingredients, too, she notes.
On Arizona Farm Bureau’s Fill Your Plate blog, you can find all kinds of breakfast recipes, suggestions and options.