WE MAKE BREAKFAST BETTER

No. It’s not accurate to define the healthiness of a food by considering one component in isolation – whether it’s GI, sugar or fibre content. There’s no universal agreement among experts on the effect on GI on health. GI doesn’t tell you how nutritious a food is. It indicates the availability of the carbohydrate to digestion. Oats, for example, are medium GI, but they’re 100% whole grain, high in fibre, a source of protein and have with no added sodium. Although our breakfast cereals have medium to high GIs, they’re usually consumed with milk (which has a low GI), which lowers the overall glycaemic load (GL) of the meal. The GI may be useful for people with diabetes to help them manage their blood glucose levels – though the evidence on this isn’t consistent either. The European Food Safely Authority (EFSA) has yet to approve any health claims linked to GI. And the other evidence linking GI, GL and health is largely inconclusive.

Yes. If a food product has the word “whole” listed on its ingredient label – wholewheat pasta or wholemeal bread, for example, then you know it’s been made with whole grain flour, even if the other ingredients are processed. By the way, even whole grains need to be processed: removing the inedible outer husk makes them safe to eat. But they’re less processed than refined grains, which require additional steps to remove the bran and germ.

No. Breakfast cereals aren’t a major source of saturated fats, and contain no added trans fats. Some grains, such as oats, can be higher in fats – but these are naturally present in the grain, and tend to be ‘good’ fats, not saturated fats.

Breakfast cereals usually have a high or medium GI score – which will be lowered by adding milk. Lots of things can affect a cereal’s GI, like the heating and processing of the grains during manufacturing to make them safe and tasty to eat. Some intact whole grain cereals, like oats and mueslis, may have a low GI score – but not always: you can’t work out the GI just by looking at a product’s nutrition label. It’s calculated by testing each product in the human body. During manufacturing, cereals can change their GI, so the GI of a cereal made in one market could have a different GI in another market due to differences in production. Batch cooked corn flakes, for example, have a very different GI value (132) from extruded corn flakes (72). It’s not just the GI of a product that’s important. What really matters is the overall impact on blood sugar levels of a whole meal, since foods interact with each other. For instance, the GI of breakfast cereals will significantly decrease when consumed with milk.

Palm oil plays an important role in Nestle Breakfast Cereals as, among other things, it helps us to achieve the crunchy texture we all enjoy in the morning.

You can enter the promotion from 23/08/2018 – 06/09/2018.