The UK consumer magazine ' Which? ' says some breakfast cereals contain as much sugar or salt as a chocolate bar or a packet of crisps, while others contain almost the same amount of fat as a thick pork sausage, and a McDonald's McBacon Roll.
The magazine's survey of 275 breakfast cereals found that more than three-quarters had high levels of sugar, a fifth had high levels of salt, while seven per cent were high in saturated fat.
Contents of cereals from a range of shops and manufacturers were compared with the amounts of sugar, salt and fat advocated by the Food Standards Agency's (FSA) proposed 'traffic light' labelling scheme.
The report used the red, amber and green colour coding from the labelling criteria to show whether levels of salt, sugar, fat and saturated fat per 100g are high, medium or low.
It was found that 88 per cent of the cereals targeted at children were high in sugar, while 13 per cent were high in salt and 10 per cent were high in saturated fat.
Some "healthy" breakfast cereals were found to contain more fat per bowl than two fried eggs or a bacon sandwich and other cereals considered to be lighter options by shoppers contain as much sugar or salt as a chocolate bar or packet of crisps, says Which?
Of those cereals scoring a red for sugar, both Asda and Morrison's Golden Puffs were rated the worst offenders and contained the highest amount of sugar at 55g per 100g.
A fifth of cereals tested were high in salt and Kellogg's All Bran and Morrison's Right Balance had the highest amounts.
Nine children's cereals contained more than four teaspoons of sugar per suggested portion and only 13 per cent scored a green traffic light for sugar.
The three worst offenders overall were Quaker Oatso Simple Kids (any flavour), Kellogg's Coco Pops Straws and Mornflake Pecan and Maple Crisp.