Best Brands of Healthy Vegan Breakfast Cereals

You don’t need to have refined sugar and animal-laden vitamin D, to make a healthy breakfast cereal. Here are some  great brands on the market, you may need to seek them out in independent shops or order online. But it’s worth it, helping them to become mainstream!

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.

Crispy Fantasy (a high-protein breakfast cereal)

Crispy Fantasy is a brand founded by two young men with big ambitions to replace the big brands, and already have received massive funding, to shake up the cereal market.

These cereals are high in protein, but still retain childhood tastes. They have the same protein as a bowl of cornflakes, and twice that as a bowl of Frosties, plus far less sugar, and no artificial sweeteners.

Made with a mix of soy and pea protein (so great for repairing your organs and bones – and growing children), these cereals use proper tasty ingredients to fill you up.

They cost a little more than cheap cereals with a base of wheat and sugar, but they replace them with pea protein and agave syrup (which costs 117 times more, though the cereal is not 117 times more expensive than Cornflakes!)

Delivery is free for orders over £44, and flavours to keep you full for hours include:

• Cinnamon Glaze
• Golden Honey (not real honey!)
• Double Chocolate

Turtle Cereals (healthy breakfasts from Belgium)

Turtle Cereals is a great breakfast cereal company just over the border in Belgium. One wonders why no-one can come up with something more interesting here, instead of the same-old, same-old flavours and unhealthy cereals that we’ve had for years on supermarket shelves. Not only these cereals organic and Fair Trade, but the boxes are also recycled.

This company was founded by a husband-and-wife team. He grew up in Belgium where he loved long forest walks, and she grew up in Spain and Denmark.

Both moved to Belgium, and named the company after the creature that goes slow, focusing on slow-release healthy breakfast options, rather than fast sugar cereals, as sold so much today.

The unique range includes:

• Carrot Cake Porridge (cake for breakfast?)
• Cocoa Pillows with Hazelnut (tastes like nutella)
• Colour Loops (more nutritious than Cheerios)
• Granola Nuts & Seeds
• Date, Fig & Apricot Porridge
• Chocolate & Banana Porridge
• 6-Seed Porridge
• Multi-Grain Flakes with Chocolate
• Dark Chocolate Cornflakes
• Oat Crunchy Dark Chocolate

You can shop in bulk online. But it’s better really to ask your local stores to stock this brand, as they will get cheaper rates. A good reason to shop at community shops and co-operatives, as they will be more likely to order in what you want!

Cheeky Nibbles (healthy cereals that taste like dessert)

Cheeky Nibble is a wonderful brand of vegan granolas, a bit expensive but that’s because they are artisan-made, allergen-friendly, free from palm oil and sold in sustainable packaging. They also taste like dessert, so it’s like eating healthy cake for breakfast, and are absolutely delicious.

The founder created the brand as she has autism and Tourettes Syndrome and found that baking helped her anxiety. She also finds exercise helpful, so she combined her two passions to bake granolas that were chunky enough to take with her to the gym, yet had nostalgic flavours.

The granola is sold in boxes that are carbon-balanced with World Land’s Trust, so you can eat your breakfast with a clear conscience. The flavours include:

• Cherry Bakewell
• Victoria sponge
• Banoffee Pie
• Vanilla latte

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.

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.