If you had cereal for breakfast this morning, then you already made one huge mistake today, as it turns out you could have eaten loads of chocolate fingers instead. Think of all that wasted time spooning cereal into your mouth when you could just have crammed it full of fingers in one go, and run out the door choking down your nutritious breakfast.

Well, that's not quite true, but a study by the Action on Sugar group in the UK decided to take a look at the Which? report of 2012 and compare the results there with their own findings to see which breakfast cereals contained the most sugar, and which had increased since 2012.

As it turns out, a lot of cereals have been adding extra sugar to their recipes, so the group made a list of the top cereals in each category. When it came to the highest amount of sugar, the clear winner was Aldi's Harvest Morn Choco Rice, which contained 39g of sugar per 100g, the equivalent of seven and a half chocolate fingers. Kellog's Frosites sat in second place, with 37g of sugar, while also in the top five were Kellog's Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes, which contain 36.3g.

When comparing the results to 2012, the sugar content of Harvest Morn Choco Rice was up a staggering 18%, which had helped it to the top of the table, while others had made an effort to reduce the sugar in their cereals. Aldi’s Harvest Morn Crunchy Honey Nut Cornflakes also saw a reduction from 34.4g to 28g per 100g (19%), while Honey Monster Puffs, previously known as Sugar Puffs, dropped their levels from 35g to 29g, a 17% decrease.

When it came to the least sugary cereals, Nestlé Shredded Wheat came out on top, with 0.7g, while Quaker Oats Oatso Simple Original (1g) and Weetabix (4.4g) rounded out the top three.

Speaking about the findings, Chairman Graham MacGregor said that the continuing appeasement of the food industry by the government had allowed the obesity problem to get to the levels it has, and that the inclusion of so much sugar in cereals was a particular danger to kids: "Children quickly become used to the taste of high-sugar cereals and find healthier ones less palatable, which has long-term implications on their health. Eating too much sugar leads to weight gain, raising the risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease and some cancers".

Via Breaking News, i100