Kokova Magazine

When it comes to following a free-from diet, the breakfast cereals, bars and bread options available to replace 'regular' food is often more than a little disappointing, with many replacements completely overloading on the sugar content to make up for the lack of flavour in the alternative ingredients being used.

So at this year's Allergy & free-from Show at Olympia we were quite excited to discover an extensive collection of free-from breakfast options on offer.

Cork Distribution have recently launched a gluten free range of cereals under the Rebelicious brand, containing non wheat grains such as oats, buckwheat, corn and rice. Their wheat free range consists largely of oat based products and their gluten free products are all laboratory certified, with the company being registered with the Coeliac Society of Ireland.

When assembling this gluten free range, the object for Rebelicious was to provide the conventional gluten free products to those who wanted them, but at a price that was below the current market levels. With great tasting cereals such as Rebelicious Cornflakes, Rebelicious Porridge Oats, Rebelicious Buckwheat, Amaranth & Granola Muesli, Rebelicious Crunchy Buckwheat Flakes, Rebelicious Red Berry Muesli and Rebelicious Puffed Rice the company certainly has a broad selection to choose from.

Our favourite? The cornflakes. Totally more-ish and tasting as good as any other major brand! Slightly smaller flakes but no less on taste and so yummy we ate the lot in a few days. Clean, crisp flavour and satisfying through and through, with no additives or preservatives listed on the packet.

While the Buckwheat may seem a little bland in comparison, once you add a touch of almond milk and chopped banana you have a perfectly delicious, Rebelicious breakfast to start your day. And the oats maintain the same level of quality as the other products we tried. Rebelicious are offering a simple solution to start your day - fuss-free, affordable, gluten-free, fully tested and certified organic cereals. Find out more at www.rebeliciousfoods.com

Another great tasting gluten-free cereal on offer at the show came from Nature's Path. With their 'Nice and Nobbly' Granolas they certainly have some good flavours to try. As with many granolas, they are not always the healthiest choice for breakfast as many end up with quite a high sugar content but they are certainly one of the tastiest. With a choice of either Blueberries, Raspberries, Strawberries and Yoghurt Chunks Granola or Pumpkin Seeds, Almonds & Raisins with a light dash of Cinnamon Granola, we can certainly appreciate the popularity of this brand. The family-owned 'organic-only' cereal producer is not only producing quality products to start your day, they are also environmentally conscious by "always leaving the soil better than we find it".

Along with their loose granolas, Nature's Path have Granola Bars - the same 'Nice and Nobbly' granola packed into a handy bar for when you are on the go. An instant hit with us at Your Source, where these disappeared in record time. Great taste, easy to snatch and run - and another winning flavour combination. Choose from a moreish collaboration of organic chocolate chips containing rich fair trade chocolate lovingly jumbled with whole grains and gluten free oats or an irresistible huddle of tangy cranberries, sweet almonds and crunchy peanuts mingled with pumpkin seeds, dried coconut, flax seeds and gluten free oats.

If you find yourself short of time in the mornings then a Nature's Path Hot and Steamy porridge oats sachet popped into your pocket means that once you get to work you can pop the contents into a mug, along with either 100ml of water or milk, and ping in the microwave for 75 seconds. www.naturespath.co.uk

More on-the-go, high-fibre, gluten-free addition to the breakfast menu is available from Udi's, with their Apple Cinnamon Toaster Pastries. A simple gluten-free pastry that you can pop into the toaster. The down side? A whole list of ingredients, many that we wouldn't probably recommend as 'healthy' when it comes to breakfast but they are certainly tasty (although a tad too salty).

As with all cereals (and other free-from foods) it can be very easy to get wrapped up in the 'free-from' label and just because a product is free from certain ingredients, it is always important to remember to check what else is being added in. We are finding more and more that salt and sugar are being used to replace the 'missing' ingredients and would urge caution and label checking to make sure that the foods you are eating remain healthy too.

Last on our breakfast list, we opted for a loaf to toast with Helen's Quick Seeded Bread Mix. Ready to bake in two minutes, this simple packet mix requires an egg, vegetable oil and milk to make a nutty seeded loaf in under and hour.

Difficult to slice warm, it is best left to be completely cool. As far as being bread, it is more a seeded cake and while it tastes OK it certainly won't be at the top of our list for a bread alternative. If it was billed more as a nut loaf cake we would probably have expected the resulting loaf cake we made. That said, it tasted fine topped with a little PURE sunflower spread. Just be careful of eating too many seeds if you have a delicate stomach as this will certainly get things moving a little more than you may prefer!

The winner for us out of this selection has to be the Rebelicious range. Good clean breakfast cereals, largely keeping within the recommended nutritional values of sugar, fat and salt. Most importantly we could not only understand but also pronounce all of the ingredients listed - and noted that they contained hardly anything other than the products we expected from their given titles.

Topped off with a sprinkling of Good Seed Shelled Hemp and we were in breakfast heaven. These little bits of nutty shelled hemp taste very similar to pine nuts and are a great alternative if you can't eat nuts. Made for sprinkling, baking, cooking or snacking, they have already made their way into our food cupboard as one to keep.

Many thanks to Rebelicious, Udi's, Nature's Path, Helen's and Good Hemp for the samples we reviewed.