Your Brekky Questions Answered

Brought to you by Kellogg’s Open For Breakfast.fruit-loopsHello! I recently did a call-out on my Facebook page asking for your questions around breakfast cereal. I said that you could ask ANYTHING, and the team at Kellogg’s would answer them. You guys didn’t hold back. I loved that you guys thought of things that I wouldn’t and didn’t think of. I also love that Kellogg’s answered them honestly as part of Open for Breakfast {a cool thing where they completely open up and let you chat to their team}. Like many families, Kellogg’s has been part of my life since as long as I can remember, back when Dad would do the grocery shopping on a rare chance and we’d beg him to buy the special multi-pack cereals, and he would. Such a sucker, my Dad.I picked five questions from you guys and you can find them below, as well as some awesome videos from that Instagram guy, Zach. I love him and thought I’d share his fun videos with you too.Who made the rule that we should eat cereal for breakfast? I really don’t like cereal. It starts out crunchy and turns into gloop and tastes like mud.

No one made a rule that we should all eat cereal for breakfast, but having cereal and milk in the morning is quick, inexpensive and good for you. There’s protein and calcium from the milk plus all the good stuff in cereal like fibre, B vitamins and iron. We’ve written about the benefits of the cereal and milk combo here too.

By the way we don’t think any food should be gloop or taste like mud either, which is why ‘bowl life’ – the time in the bowl that cereal stays crunchy – is a very important attribute for us when developing new cereals!

The latest research conducted by the Australian Breakfast Cereal Manufacturer’s Forum (or ABCMF for short) also found that two out of three cereal eaters love to keep it crispy or crunchy. In fact, 13 million Aussies take care in the mornings to get the milk ratio just right to prevent soggy cereal and 3.7 million add extra crunch with nuts and seeds. Interestingly, men are more likely than women to love soggy cereal (37% vs. 28%)!

If you don’t like the cereal and milk combo, have you tried it by itself as a snack? Or added it to your salads at lunch? There’s a bunch of ways you can use cereal outside of breakfast on our Open for Breakfast recipe hub.

Coco Pops has 11g of sugar Nutri-Grain has 10.7g. Recommendations I’ve found are for children to have a maximum of 12g of sugar a day. Coco Pops has a 2 star health rating and Nutri-Grain has a 4 star health rating. Why is there such a difference when there is a minimal difference in sugar content?

The World Health Organisation recommendation for children is a maximum of 22g of added sugar per day, which is the equivalent of about 5 teaspoons. This recommendation doesn’t include the sugar found naturally in fruit, grains and milk, but rather only applies to sugars added to foods such as cane sugar and honey.

The Health Star Rating system was designed by the government to look at the whole food. We shouldn’t judge the healthfulness of a food solely on its sugar content. The rating calculator looks at the amounts of nutrients like protein and fibre together with the fruit, vegetable, nut and legume content; balancing that out with the sugar, saturated fat and sodium content. It then gives the food a star rating. Nutri-Grain has protein and fibre which contributes to the higher star rating compared to Coco Pops, which is lower in protein and fibre.

If you want more information about the sugar in our products and where it comes from – check out this infographic.

Do you pay for star ratings? How does it work?

We definitely don’t. You can’t buy stars… you have to earn them! It’s what’s in our cereals that get the stars.

This is how the system works.

Companies who want to put Health Star Ratings on their packs use a calculator (or formula) to figure out what a product’s star is which is based on the Australian Dietary Guidelines. The calculator looks at many things including the kilojoules in the product, fibre and protein content as well as how much salt, sugar or fat is in it. The system then then gives the food a star rating depending on all those factors.
You can learn more on the Health Star Ratings’ website here.

We’ve updated all of our cereal boxes so you can see the stars on the front of the pack when you shop. Remember the system is designed for comparing similar products, like cereal versus cereal, not cereal versus yoghurt.

The star rating system is voluntary at the moment so not all companies do it, but we think it’s a very useful tool for people to compare foods at a glance when they’re standing in the supermarket aisle, which is why we’ve had ratings on all Kellogg’s cereals since the end of 2015. We’re working on doing the same for snacks too, and we’re aiming to have this all done before the end of 2018.

Why doesn’t cereal have zip-lock closing plastic tops like most things these days? Please tell us they’re coming!

We get this question a lot, and have definitely looked into it! Unfortunately, our current packaging set up just couldn’t cope with the addition of zip locks, as it would make the process much slower and more expensive too. We do have a select few products with zip locks that are packaged in external facilities and currently sold through Aldi, but it isn’t a feasible option for all of our products.

Can you please put cool Disney toys in your cereal like they do in the USA? Not just in the fun cereals but in other cereals as well. Please!

Quite timely that you asked about this! If you’ve been wondering where collectibles have gone, we’re working behind the scenes and will have something exciting to share with you soon.

Research that we’ve conducted recently showed that 81 per cent of mums think it’s a good idea for Kellogg’s to do collectibles, with 2 in 3 telling us they’d love them back in cereal boxes.

Fun fact: our founder W.K Kellogg actually came up with the idea of putting collectibles in packs. It’s a philosophy that’s gone on to create many fond memories for families since the first collectible in 1937.


Guys! I think that means the toys are coming back, and I’m gonna be shopping at Aldi for cereals for the snap lock.

I hope that answers some of your questions. You can head over to the Open For Breakfast site to ask more questions and find more answers.

What toy would you love to see in your cereal pack? I wouldn’t be cranky if I found a diamond ring {just saying!}. ?

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4 thoughts on “Your Brekky Questions Answered”

  1. I LOVE Zach’s video and I like this collaboration Telle. I am impressed with how open and transparent Kellogs seem to be to answering questions.I am a fan for the toys as long as they are not just in the Coco Pops but some of the healthier options too.

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