Cereal is a timeless food, enjoyed by people of all ages. However, traditional cereals are often high in carbs, sugar, and artificial ingredients, making them unsuitable for those following a ketogenic diet. Fortunately, the rise of keto-friendly cereals has provided a healthy alternative, allowing individuals to enjoy their favorite breakfast food without compromising their dietary goals. This article provides a comprehensive review of various keto cereal options, including Wonderworks, to help you make informed choices.
Understanding the Keto Diet
Before diving into the reviews, it's essential to understand the ketogenic diet. The ketogenic diet is a very low-carb, high-fat diet that shares many similarities with the Atkins and low-carb diets. It involves drastically reducing carbohydrate intake and replacing it with fat. This reduction in carbs puts your body into a metabolic state called ketosis. When this happens, your body becomes incredibly efficient at burning fat for energy. It also turns fat into ketones in the liver, which can supply energy for the brain. Ketogenic diets can cause significant reductions in blood sugar and insulin levels.
The keto diet encourages people to eat foods with very high fat content but very low carb content. Therefore, people on a keto diet want to avoid cereals with ingredients that have a lot of carbs.
Top Keto Cereal Brands
In the past, those on the keto diet would have to give up their beloved cereal. However, there are many great keto cereals out there. Here are some of the best keto cereal options on the market, all of which are low in net carbs, use natural sweeteners like monk fruit, are low in saturated fat, and have healthy ingredients like cinnamon, flax seeds, sunflower seeds, and chia seeds. These keto cereal options are not just for breakfast; you can have these keto-friendly cereals whenever you feel like it.
Magic Spoon Cereal
Topping the list is Magic Spoon Cereal, known for its great quality ingredients like milk protein blend, cocoa powder, turmeric extract, and vegetable juice. Magic Spoon contains 11 grams of protein and 3 grams of net carbs per serving and is gluten-free and grain-free. Compared to popular non-keto breakfast cereals like Fruit Loops, which only contains 2 grams of protein and 21 grams of net carbs, Magic Spoon makes its cereal with ingredients you can feel good about without all the guilt. Magic Spoon Frosted may not have any real marshmallows in it, but there’s a marshmallow quality to the cereal morsels that really works for it. It’s got that soft, nostalgic crunch that feels familiar, even without the fluffy bits. Magic Spoon Fruity is the closest thing to a keto-friendly Fruit Loops you can buy and is Magic Spoon’s best flavor.
Read also: Easy Low-Carb Cheese Crackers
Catalina Crunch
Catalina Crunch understands that giving up cereal was a hard decision, as cereal is delicious despite being full of empty calories and high sugar. Catalina Crunch has created cereal with high-quality ingredients that you can feel good about. Their ingredients have zero sugar, are gluten-free, and low carb. They have many low-carb cereal options, including Chocolate Peanut Butter, Fruity, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Dark Chocolate, Honey Graham, Mint Chocolate Chip, Maple Waffle, and Chocolate Banana.
Catalina Crunch is loaded with great nutritional value, containing up to 11g Plant-Protein, 9g Fiber, 0g Sugar, and only 5g Net Carbs. Their cereals are also high in fiber and protein, which will fill you up more and help with overeating. Catalina Crunch is the perfect breakfast cereal, snack cereal, and overall delicious keto cereal. The brand name “Catalina Crunch,” sounds like a nickname for an old-timey professional boxer. This cereal tastes great, is crunchy like a good cereal should be, so it can withstand the addition of milk and doesn’t immediately get soggy. The toasted, cinnamony notes are wonderful.
High Key Cereal
High Key Cereal prides itself on being keto-friendly, gluten-free, and guilt-free, even offering a 100% money-back guarantee. One of their most popular flavors is Maple Brown Sugar, a hot cereal that High Key believes could replace oatmeal as a crowd favorite. Despite its name, the Maple Brown Sugar hot cereal has very low sugar, making it a high protein and healthy option. It is easy to make and has 14 grams of fat, 9 grams of protein, and is also grain-free. If you wish, you could use almond milk in place of regular milk. High Key Cereal also offers a variety pack featuring two of their most popular, keto-friendly cereals: Strawberry and Cream and Cinnamon Spice.
If you are looking for a protein base cereal option, then High Key Cereal has a healthy and delicious protein cereal that you will love. These protein keto cereals come in Cocoa, Fruity, Cinnamon, Frosted, Honey Nut, and a variety pack of all five. These protein keto cereals are easy on the sugar, low net carbs, gluten-free, and high protein.
Cereal School
Cereal School is a great crunch cereal that is sugar-free and has a lot of protein. They also have a great variety of flavors like Peanut Butter, Fruity, Cinnamon Bun, Cookies & Cream, Berries, Apple Pie, and Cocoa. These keto cereals make for a great breakfast or just as a keto-friendly snack. All Cereal School keto cereal options have healthy and guilt-free ingredients you can feel good about, ingredients like milk protein isolate, monk fruit sweetener, cinnamon, and sunflower seeds oil. If you love to eat your keto cereal with milk, Cereal School suggests having it with and unsweetened nut milk such as almond milk. Cereal School keto cereal also have a low grams of net carbs so you can feel good about your love for cereal. Cereal School wants to ensure that their customers are getting delicious, healthy crunch cereal that are will make the perfect breakfast keto cereal or the perfect cereal keto snack.
Read also: Keto Calorie Counting: A Detailed Guide
Wonderworks Keto Cereal: A Detailed Review
Wonderworks keto-friendly cereal is the brainchild of General Mills, offering three flavors: chocolate, peanut butter, and cinnamon. This cereal has a nice crunch and pairs perfectly with almond milk.
Ingredients
Wonderworks has pretty good quality ingredients. The sweeteners are allulose, erythritol, and stevia.
- Chocolate: Milk Protein Concentrate, Erythritol, Allulose, Whey Protein Isolate, Inulin, Palm Kernel Oil, Cocoa Processed With Alkali, Palm Oil, Soluble Corn Fiber, Canola Oil, Rice Starch, Natural Flavor, Soy Lecithin, Salt, Stevia Extract.
- Peanut Butter: Milk Protein Concentrate, Allulose, Peanut Flour, Erythritol, Peanut Butter (peanuts, salt), Whey Protein Isolate, Inulin, Palm Kernel Oil, Palm Oil, Canola Oil, Rice Starch, Soy Lecithin, Natural Flavor, Stevia Extract.
- Cinnamon: Milk Protein Concentrate, Erythritol, Allulose, Whey Protein Isolate, Inulin, Palm Kernel Oil, Palm Oil, Soluble Corn Fiber, Canola Oil, Cinnamon, Rice Starch, Soy Lecithin, Natural Flavor, Stevia Extract.
Nutrition
Per 1 cup serving, Wonderworks cereal has only 3 net carbs and 15 grams of protein.
Flavors
- Chocolate: The cocoa flavor baked into these Wonderworks puffs is suitably rich and compliments the floury mouthfeel better than peanut butter.
- Peanut Butter: The flavors are strong and would perfectly combine as peanut butter and chocolate in making a Reese's puff-style keto cereal. However, the taste is pretty faint.
- Cinnamon: The cinnamon flavor is simply too earthen and spicy to be pleasing.
Texture
The texture here is most likely to throw people off. These puffs start crispy, but they quickly disintegrate into powdery, mealy slimishness.
Cost
It runs $6.98 at Walmart, making the price per oz only 68.4 cents! Per serving that’s only $1.01, making it the lowest-cost keto cereal on the market right now.
Read also: Magnesium Supplements for Keto
Overall Impression
Overall, even with a "sugar-spoiled" palate, Wonderworks Cereals miss the mark. Chocolate comes closest to earning its keep in your pantry, but at $6.99 a box, unless your keto diet is so prohibitively strict that you can’t deviate, you might as well spring for a premium, simply formulated cereal from the LäraBar line.
Making Your Own Keto Granola
If you have tried a lot of keto granola and have enjoyed them but now want to try making your own breakfast granola, then you are in luck. The best part about making your own granola is knowing that you are in charge of what goes into it. You can choose ingredients that you like and omit the ones that you do not from the recipe. Try to create a recipe that is catered to your tastes or make a recipe that specialized for someone else as a fun gift. You can add fun ingredients such as coconut oil, coconut milk, chia seeds, cinnamon, or even coconut flakes.
Keto Granola Recipe
Here is one granola recipe that is low in grams of net carbs, saturated fat, and is super easy to make. If you love cinnamon cereal and want to add some cinnamon to this recipe, then you most definitely can.
Ingredients:
- Pecans
- Almonds
- Coconut flakes
- Butter
- Coconut oil
- Coconut milk
- Chia seeds
- Cinnamon
Instructions:
- Pre-heat your oven to 275F and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Add the pecans, almond and coconut flakes to a food processor and pulse 3-5 times until everything is roughly chopped and combined (Feel free to roughly chop using a knife if you prefer).
- Heat a bottom heavy saucepan over low heat and add the butter. Allow to melt down, stirring continuously using a wooden spoon, for 5-10 minutes until browned in color and caramel in smell.
- Allow the butter to cool for 5-7 minutes before adding the remaining ingredients. Stir to combine.
- Pour your nut mixture into a large mixing bowl and top with your browned butter mixture. Combine thoroughly until everything is coated.
- Pour the mixture out onto your baking sheet and spread out into a single layer.
- Bake for a total of 60 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes with your wooden spoon and then re-flattening out onto the baking sheet.
- Allow to cool completely before breaking apart enjoying.
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