The 60+ BEST Vegan Cereals

In this article, you will find which common ingredients make most conventional cereal non-vegan and a list of 60+ vegan-friendly cereal brands.

Let’s begin!

Common Cereal Ingredients That Are Not Vegan

In most cereals, you can easily find various animal-derived ingredients, making many mainstream brands non-vegan. 

Most common and sneaky non-vegan ingredients that you can find in cereal include:

• Vitamin D – You can find two forms of Vitamin D – Vitamin D3, which comes from animals, such as sheep’s wool, and Vitamin D2 from plants, like lichen. Most cereal brands add Vitamin D3, which makes it non-vegan.
• Lanolin (also called Cholecalciferol) – An oil that sheep produce in their wool. It is added to create a coating on the cereal and make it water-resistant. 
• Processed (white) sugar – White sugar is processed with animal bone char in the commercial food industry. However, any cereal that uses raw, unrefined, organic sugar isn’t filtered through bone char, and it is vegan friendly.
• Gelatin – Gelatin is a protein that comes from boiling animal skin, tendons, bones, and ligaments with water.
• Lecithin – An emulsifier found in egg yolks, the tissues and organs of many animals. It is commonly used as a sticking agent to keep all the ingredients together and balance the chewy, crunchy texture. A vegan-friendly alternative is soy lecithin or sunflower lecithin.
• Tocopherol – Added for preservation to prevent color fading. It may or may not be vegan. It refers to Vitamin E, which can be derived from plant, animal, or petroleum sources.
• Honey – Brands often add honey to sweeten their breakfast foods.
• Whey powder – Derived from animal-based milk.

Vegan Cereal Options

Here are the best vegan breakfast cereals, including vegan brands plus vegan-friendly cereal brands that have a lot of vegan options.

Barbara’s

Barbara’s Organics isn’t a fully vegan brand, but they have many vegan-friendly cereals:

• Organic Corn Flakes
• Puffins Cereal
• Peanut Butter Puffins
• Cinnamon Puffins
• Multigrain Puffins Cereal
• Peanut Butter Chocolate Puffins
• Oat Crunch
• Multigrain Spoonfuls
• Shredded Wheat Biscuit Cereal
• Cinnamon Raisin Bran
• Honest O’s
• Brown Rice Crisps

Cascadian Farm

Their vegan-friendly options include: Purely O’s, Cinnamon Crunch, Vanilla Crisp, Berry Vanilla Puffs, and Whole Grain Crunch Cereal.

One Degree Organics

One Degree’s vegan cereal options include: Sprouted Maize Flakes, Brown Rice Cacao Crisps, Sprouted Oat O’s. 

Kashi Cereal 

Kashi is another cereal brand that offers many different cereals, and the majority (but not all) of them are vegan. The most common non-vegan ingredients they use is usually honey, but the following Kashi cereals are 100% vegan-friendly:

• Organic Blueberry Clusters Cereal
• Toasted Berry Crisp
• Cinnamon Crisp
• Chocolate Crunch
• Peanut Butter Crunch
• Whole Wheat Biscuits, Autumn Wheat
• Whole Wheat Biscuits, Berry Fruitful
• Whole Wheat Biscuits, Cinnamon Harvest
• Whole Wheat Biscuits, Island Vanilla

Nature’s Path Cereal

You can currently find 43 vegan-friendly cereals on their website with many different shapes, flavors, and many gluten-free and organic options. They also have many super-cute and colorful kid-friendly vegan cereals. Options include (but are not limited to):

• Gorilla Munch
• EnviroKidz Koala Crisp
• Panda Puffs
• Coco Chimps
• Leapin’ Lemurs
• Cheetah Chomps
• Rhino Rolls
• Turtle Splash
• Sunrise Crunchy Vanilla
• Fruit Juice Corn Flakes
• Mesa Sunrise Flakes with Raisins
• Rice Puffs
• Crispy Rice (like Rice Krispies)
• Whole O’s (like Cheerio’s)
• Love Crunch

Food For Life  

Ideal if you are looking for a vegan and healthier cereal alternative. Their vegan cereal flavors include: Whole Grain Cereal, Cinnamon Raisin, Sprouted Flakes, Golden Flax.

365 Everyday Value (the Whole Foods store brand)

You can choose between: Organic Morning O’s, Corn Flakes, Raisin Bran, Wheat Waffle Cereal, or Wheat Squares.

15 Vegan-Friendly Mainstream Cereals

If you’ve been wondering what cereals are vegan, here are the mainstream ones that we get a lot of questions about. Not every cereal from each brand is vegan, but we’ve included the ones that are at the time of writing this. If you come across more vegan flavors from these brands, please let us know!

Trader Joe’s Cereal

Trader Joe’s has several accidentally vegan cereal options, including:

• Joe’s O’s – Peanut-free, tree nut-free, dairy-free, soy-free and vegan-friendly. Whole grain oats, modified corn starch, sugar (possibly controversial ingredient), oat fiber, salt, tripotassium phosphate, and vitamin E.
• Neapolitan Puffs – It is made with garbanzo beans and has cane sugar. It is kosher and gluten-free.
• Panda Puffs – Peanut butter organic puffs that are crunchy, sweet, satisfying, and accidentally vegan! All the ingredients they contain include – whole-grain cornmeal, cornmeal, cane sugar, peanut butter, soy oil, sea salt, and vitamin E.
• Crunchy Maple Ladders – Another Trader Joe’s accidentally vegan cereal; it is also made with very clean ingredients, so it is an excellent healthy cereal option.
• Bran Flakes – Crunchy, healthy, and vegan-friendly option. The cereal flakes are made with organic wheat and organic wheat bran.
• Cocoa Crunch – A healthier cocoa puffs, which turned out to be vegan friendly, too.
• Grainless Granola – Made with various seeds and nuts and sweetened with a blend of coconut sugar and tapioca syrup. The Grain-free granola is sweet, crunchy, tasty, and a fantastic healthy vegan cereal option.

Cap’n Crunch

Cap’n Crunch contains ingredients like artificial colors, palm oil, and sugar, which can be controversial. However, it doesn’t have Vitamin D, honey, whey, gelatin, etc. If this is acceptable for you, the vegan options from Cap’n Crunch include:

• Cap’n Crunch Original
• Cap’n Crunch Berries
• Cap’n Crunch Peanut Butter Crunch

Quaker

A well-known brand that has a handful of accidentally vegan cereal options:

• Quaker Life Original  
• Quaker Life Cinnamon
• Quaker Crunchy Puffs

General Mills Fiber One

• Fiber One Original is a vegan-friendly cereal option by General Mills. Most of their other cereals aren’t vegan-friendly because they are fortified with Vitamin D3 and contain pyridoxine hydrochloride, often derived from non-vegan sources.  

Make Your Own Vegan Granola

A great DIY alternative to store-bough cereal is granola. You can off course find dozens of brands in the grocery store (watch out for honey). But granola is one of the easiest foods to make yourself! Check out our vegan maple brown sugar granola recipe to see how it’s done. It’s delicious.

Frequently Asked Vegan Cereal Questions

Vegan Cereal Takeaways

As you can see, there are plenty of vegan-friendly cereal brands and options. It is always best to double-check the label before purchasing any store-bought cereal or food. Often, brands change their formulas or use sneaky ingredients that, unfortunately, make foods non-vegan.

Is there a vegan cereal brand you would like to see on this list? Let us know in the comments below! 

We hope you found this vegan cereal guide helpful. Please note that brands and ingredients do change over time, so always check the ingredient label and contact the company directly with questions.

This article was written by Creative Compass. Creative Compass is a vegan-owned marketing team aiming to help vegan and animal-friendly brands and nonprofits make a difference in the world.