Food Group Breakfast Cereals

The Breakfast Cereals group includes two major categories: ready-to-eat (RTE) and to-be cooked (hot) cereals. The majority of breakfast cereals are listed by brand name. The number and level of fortification nutrients differ appreciably between breakfast cereals, resulting in many unique products that can’t adequately be described generically.
Breakfast cereals generally consist of one or more cereal grains, either as whole grains or milled portions, as a major constituent. The continuum of grain content goes from less than 50% for some presweetened RTE cereals and approaches 100% for hot cereals. The predominant grains for RTE cereals are corn, wheat, oats and rice. Additional ingredients such as sweeteners, flavoring or texturizing macroingredients (including fruit, nuts, and oil), microingredient flavors or colors, and nutritional fortificants and shelf life preservatives may be added (Caldwell et al., 2000). Manufacturing processes generally used for RTE cereals include: flaked, extruded flakes, gun-puffed whole grains, extruded gun-puffed, oven-puffed, shredded whole grains, and extruded shredded methods.