Uncle Toby’s Plus Iron | Chewsday Review
The spotlight is on Uncle Toby’s Plus Iron this week - a breakfast cereal that promises to bowl you over with its iron content. Will it bring strength to your morning and cereal-ously deliver? Let’s dig in and find out.
- Whole grain wheat (55%), corn, sugar, wheat flour, cashews (6%), salt, vegetable oil, natural flavours, vitamins and minerals minerals (calcium, iron, zinc), vitamins (c, niacin, b1, e, b2, b6, folic acid).
- Sugar is the third ingredient so I’m expecting the sugar content to be relatively high.
- Allergens: gluten, wheat, cashew.
- May contain: oats, barley, rye, other tree nuts, soy, milk, lupin.
- One serve of Uncle Toby’s Plus Iron contains 3mg of iron – this is matched by Weet-Bix and Uncle Toby’s Low Sugar Cheerios which also have 3mg of iron per serve. This is more than a quarter of a toddler’s iron requirements and more than a third of the requirements for school-aged children. Iron fortified products can be helpful for kids that are still learning to like high iron foods like meat and legumes.
- It’s great to see this cereal is calcium fortified. Calcium rich foods can be tricky to find for kids with cow’s milk allergy. One serve has 120 mg of calcium, which equals more than a third of the calcium in a cup of milk.
- Uncle Toby’s Plus Iron is high in fibre at 8.1g per 100g or 3.2g per serve. This is slightly lower than Weet-Bix (10.1g per 100g) and half the fibre content of Uncle Toby’s Vanilla O’s Low Sugar Cheerios (17.1g per 100g), but still exceeds our criteria (at least 3g of fibre per serve).
- Sodium, total fat and saturated fat are all well within the guidelines.
- Sugar sits at 14.2g per 100g which just sneaks in under our 15g per 100g criteria and is all added sugar. It’s not a deal breaker, but it is almost five times more sugar than Weet-Bix and almost four times more than Uncle Toby’s Low Sugar Cheerios .
- Uncle Toby’s Plus Iron ranges from $14-$15.90 per kg which makes cheaper than Uncle Toby’s Low Sugar Cheerios ($16.70 per kg) but much pricier than other cereal options like Weet-Bix Bites ($12 per kg), Weet-Bix ($9.30 per kg) or oats ($1.50-$4.50 per kg).
- “Iron – 25% of your daily needs” – correct, it does provide 25% of an adult’s daily requirement per serve.
- “Fibre from whole grain to support healthy digestion” – also correct, as expected from a wholegrain breakfast cereal.
- “4 star health rating”. This means the nutrition profile of Uncle Toby’s Plus Iron does quite well when compared to other cereals. This is most likely due to the added vitamins, minerals and fibre content.
- This cereal does tick some boxes when it comes to the iron, calcium and fibre content – you could even use this one as a topping for yoghurt or crush slightly to use as ‘breakfast sprinkles’. My go-to’s are still Weet-Bix or oats where you’ll get more bang for your buck!
- Looking for more on choosing breakfast cereal? My Baby, Toddler and Family Mealtimes memberships include a comprehensive product selection guide for breakfast cereals, as well as over 15 other categories.
The composition of food products changes regularly. The nutritional values of the products in this Chewsday Review were correct at the time of publishing.
