Doves Farm (organic vegan breakfast cereals)

Doves Farm is a company (from the North Wessex Downs) better known for making organic and gluten-free flours and baking powders.

But it also offers a tidy line of organic breakfast cereals, many of them the ideal alternatives to English favourites (like cornflakes, bran flakes and cocoa pops), but this time from a local ethical company that isn’t owned by a massive corporate giant.

Recycle packaging at supermarket bag bins, if your council does not recycle. Keep these cereals away from young children and pets due to nuts, dried fruits, chocolate etc. Read more on food safety for people and pets.

Doves Farm offers a balanced alternative. The range includes:

• Ancient Grain Breakfast Flakes are made with buckwheat (a seed related to rhubarb), quinoa (an Andean superfood packed with protein and calcium) and teff (the world’s smallest grain, and packed with protein).
• Ancient Grain Fruit & Fibre Flakes are a crunchy mix of buckwheat and wholegrain rice, with banana, coconut, sultanas and apple pieces.
• Organic cornflakes – the ultimate alternative to England’s favourite breakfast cereal. But these ones are a little more expensive, but that’s because they’re organic.
• Wholegrain Cocoa Rice Pops are the alternatives if you have to have chocolate for your breakfast. These are made with premium organic cocoa, to boot.

Why Choose Artisan Cereals?

Supermarket cereals and big brands often boast of having lots of added vitamins and minerals. Well for a start if you eat properly, you shouldn’t need them. And if you do, many of the ‘vegan cereals’ then ruin it all by adding lanolin (from sheep) as their source of vitamin D.

Again food campaigner Michael Pollan: He writes that if supermarkets really cared about our health, they would have aisles and aisles of fresh organic produce, with a few processed foods on top. Instead, all are designed the same.

A couple of aisles of fresh produce, then everything else is high-processed junk food.

Take a look, he’s right. He says that milk and bread (daily staples) are always put right at the far corner, so you have to go by ‘all the bargains’ to get them, hopefully coming out with more.

There are bright lights and no clocks (to make you go a bit mad). And low-profit products (like porridge oats) are never at eye level, unlike the special-offer junk foods. There are never special offers on broccoli!

Let’s take at look at the nutrition panel of Dove’s Farm vs conventional cereals:

Their breakfast ancient grain flakes are kind of like the alternative to Cornflakes (they are expensive, but so are brand name cornflakes). This brand goes a little over for sugar (7g, likely due to the natural date powder to sweeten).

But they have 12g of fibre (good, as fibre soaks up bad cholesterol – lack of fibre is a huge risk factor for cancer).

The best-selling brand of cornflakes is actually slightly less sugar (10g). But only 3g of fibre. No ‘healthy cereal’ should have as little fibre as this.

You’d be better off eating an apple. The same brand’s cocoa pops up the sugar to 17g and their most sugary cereal (advertised by a tiger) is a whopping 37g sugar. No wonder children’s teeth are rotting.