Breakfast and energy: an experiment

by Blake Pudding

Hypothesis:

From my vast experience of cereal eating I had noticed that Shreddies seem to keep me full of energy longer than most cereals. But was this really the case? I put the most popular brands of cereals through a rigorous scientific test so as to discern which contains the most energy. 

To liven things up a bit I added some non-cereals to the experiment. Who wants to just eat cereal for breakfast for two weeks?

Method:

At 8.10am every morning I ate breakfast.

At 8.40am I cycled to work from my home in Bethnal Green, East London to Holland Park, West London, a distance of 8.2 miles.

This normally took about 40 minutes. I then settled down to my working day and noted the exact time that I began to feel hungry again.

The control breakfast was 2 slices of brown toast (I opted for the nutty low GI loaf from Percy Ingle on Bethnal Green Road) with butter and marmalade.

Cereals tested: Corn Flakes, Bran Flakes, Weetabix, Shreddies, Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes, Sugar puffs, Coco Pops, Shredded Wheat and porridge.

Amount consumed: 50g of each cereal (a variety pack contains 25g of serial, which is not enough for a fully-grown adult) with 200ml of semi-skimmed milk.

On one of the days of the experiment my wife made me a sandwich consisting of two slices of toast as above with 2 fried eggs with a little cheese and some Red Rooster hot sauce. Mmmmmm, that was a good morning!

Apparatus:

Bowl 

Spoon

State-of-the-art circa 1989 14 speed racing bike with flat handlebars for city riding.

Results (in order of efficacy):

Sugar Puffs – 10.32am

Coco Pops – 10.40am

Corn flakes – 10.43am

Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes – 10.50am

Bran flakes – 11.06am

Shredded Wheat – 11.10am

Control – 11:20am

Weetabix – 11.21am

Shreddies – 11.38am

Porridge – 12.02pm

Double-fried egg sandwich (see above) – 12.37pm

Conclusions:

Shreddies are indeed good at filling one up. 

It is interesting to note how not very filling the best known brands are: Corn Flakes, Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes etc. After a bowl of one of these I was starving again very soon afterwards.

The best cereals were the stodgier ones such as Weetabix and Shredded Wheat.

The ‘fun’ sugary ones fared particularly badly.

The best cereal was the most traditional, porridge. With a bowl of porridge inside me, I worked without a rumble until well after noon and had a most productive day.

My control breakfast beat all the fun cereals and held its own with the stodgy ones.

The victor, however, by a long way was the least healthy breakfast: double-fried egg sandwich with cheese.

So tests prove that if you want to work without a break, you should have a big greasy sandwich before you leave home.