While all meals are important, breakfast gets a lot of attention as the first meal of the day. How you start your day can impact your meals later, as well as your energy level and nutrition goals.
As a Registered Dietitian, I compiled a list of ten breakfast items that are both popular AND high in sugar. (Many of these items contain as much added sugar as one serving of vanilla ice cream!)
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Oats are one of my favorite breakfast foods nutrition-wise, but I’m talking about plain oats, not the flavored ones you’ll find in ready-to-cook pouches.
Flavored oatmeal is high in added sugar. One serving of Quaker Oats in Maple Brown Sugar flavor contains 12 grams of added sugar – the equivalent of three teaspoons of table sugar (and the same amount of added sugar in one serving of Blue Ribbon vanilla ice cream).
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Cold cereal (cereal you pour from a box and add milk to – not cooked cereal) is a convenient favorite breakfast food among children and adults alike. Unfortunately, the majority of cold cereals are high in added sugar, especially the more sugary varieties aimed at kids.
One serving of Cinnamon Toast Crunch provides 12 grams of added sugar per serving (the same amount as one tablespoon of white sugar). Remember that if you have more than one serving (which is likely), the sugar content will be even higher.
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Smoothies can be super nutritious or more like a dessert, depending on how they’re prepared. Watch out for the sugar content in prepared smoothies, which tend to be high in fruit juices and fruit juice concentrates and lower in protein than the kind you can make at home.
For instance, McDonald’s medium Mango Pineapple Smoothie contains 43 grams of added sugar, which is nearly 90% of the recommended daily amount for a standard 2,000-calorie diet.
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This one might not be a big surprise, but I have to include it since it’s one of the more popular breakfast items out there. The sugar content in muffins varies a lot, but as an example, one Kirkland Signature (Costco brand) Lemon Raspberry muffin contains 23 grams of added sugar, which is more sugar than one of Costco’s chocolate chip cookies.
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Chocolate and strawberry milk are especially popular among kids, but even more adult-oriented milk types like soy and almond milk are offered in flavored versions. Soy milk is often sweetened to enhance its taste (unsweetened soy milk contains less sugar than cow’s milk).
One cup of sweetened vanilla soy milk contains eight grams of added sugar per cup. That might not sound like a ton, but it can add up quickly if you’re using it in cereal, for coffee, in smoothies, and all the other places you’d use regular milk.
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You’re probably noticing a trend here, and that’s the word “sweetened”. Plain yogurt (especially Greek yogurt) is a great source of protein and is free of added sugar, but the flavored versions can get pretty high in added sugar.
For example, one 6-ounce single serving container of Yoplait strawberry yogurt contains 13 grams of added sugar, which is just over a quarter of the daily recommended amount for a standard 2,000-calorie diet.
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Even though 100% juice doesn’t contain added sugar, it’s still high in natural sugar. One cup of orange juice contains 21 grams of sugar, whereas one medium orange contains around 12 grams of sugar. Your body responds similarly to fruit juice as it does to other sugary drinks, so be sure to drink juice in moderation!
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Several pancake mixes are low in added sugar, but watch out for prepared pancakes – especially if you’re adding maple syrup to them (14 grams of sugar per tablespoon, in case you were wondering).
One example: four of IHOP’s Cinna-Stack pancakes contain 70 grams of sugar, and that’s not including the maple syrup you can add after they’re served!
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For you latte and mocha lovers, I have some bad news. Sweetened coffee drinks can be super high in added sugar from the flavored syrups. For instance, a grande vanilla latte with 2% milk from Starbucks contains 35 grams of sugar, with around 20 grams of those being added sugar.
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Granola is often touted as a healthy food, so much so that being “granola” is even a term for health-conscious people. Like cold cereal, though, granola is pretty high in added sugar. One serving of Quaker Simply Granola contains nine grams of added sugar, and most people will eat more than the serving size of ⅔ cup, so that amount can be even higher.
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Let’s look at those sugary breakfast foods again:
- Flavored oatmeal
- Cold cereal
- Prepared smoothies
- Muffins
- Flavored milk (including those like soy and almond milk)
- Sweetened yogurt
- Juice
- Pancakes
- Sweetened coffee beverages
- Granola
Which one of these is most surprising to you? Let me know in the comments!
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