Tell me about French breakfast cereals

[BettyRoodBoy]

Off to France this summer in a campsite cabin - first time self-catering in France. I have primary age kids. Usually for a holiday "treat" we bring those mini Kelloggs Variety pack cereals on holiday in the UK but realised that would be a ridiculous use of baggage space!

I'm a bit over excited about going to a hypermarket but haven't been in one for decades.

What cereals do they have in France? The kids usually eat rice crispies, bran flakes, muesli, Shreddies, all sorts really.

Definitely a lighthearted post so no need to tell me that feeding them cornflakes is the equivalent of a bar of Dairy Milk or whatever... and of course we'll be sampling whatever pastries and other things they have!

Also any other recommendations for French supermarket products?

Historically breakfast cereals haven't been a part of our diet so the supermarkets are full of the worst imaginable rubbish because novelty, fashion etc. But there is also muesli etc and you can get shreddies cornflakes etc in the foreign aisle if you don't see them in with breakfast cereals.
Our traditional breakfast is bread and butter and jam, or bread and eg St. Moret, and hot chocolate or coffee. We don't very often eat viennoiseries.

We found that the chocolate type cereals have quite high cocoa content. They should have the big brand names like Nestle and Kellogs but with different names. Also fresh milk may not always be readily available. However if there is a campsite shop that caters for Brits then that might not be a problem.

Fresh French bread, butter and jam - mmm yum.

They’re exactly the same crap as you get in the UK, coco pops, Frosties etc.

Lion cereal is delicious. My daughter loves it. It's definitely not healthy, but it's a holiday!

I found them much sweeter generally - so, for example, the only Cheerios I've found in France are the honey ones and not the less sweetened ones we have here.

I remember them being absolutely extortionate!

you've got to get smacks!

Tell me they are like Sugar Puffs?! I bloody loved Sugar Puffs. You could put your face in the bowl and they'd stick all over you so you looked like a medieval peasant with some sort of terrible skin lurgy.

You can't really do that with smashed avocado, pea shoots and hand-knitted yoghurt or whatever we're meant to be having for breakfast these days.

I used to travel to France a lot on business & always brought back coco pops (pre children, never fed them to the kids 😂. They were much more chocolatey than ours

There are loads including ones that are now not available here because of too much sugar! Golden Grahams for example.
When DC were small, holidays were the time of year I let them have any cereals they wanted so we mostly had nestle chocolate balls.

I wonder if they were called Smack, until they were told it doesn't translate very well for Brits.

Very difficult to find any cereals that aren’t full of sugar and chocolate unless you look in the health food aisle, where you find hand knitted muesli, but there isn’t much in between.

Fresh milk is readily available these days tho IME.

Ohh this is good to know! I now need to work out how many boxes of Golden Grahams I can carry back as a foot passenger on the ferry 🤔

I'll come with and bring the duct tape, we'll get a better hoard working together 😂

Kids love the cereals when we go, DH moans as they're all really sweet and mainly chocolate based. DD likes all the varieties of special k but you can get most here now.

'Plain' cereals are really expensive but if you allow them whatever they choose on holiday they'll have loads of fun

Chocopic! Very sweet though!

Get a fresh baguette each morning as this is NOTHING like you'll ever find in the UK.

If your child isn’t having a croissant every morning for two weeks, is it even a holiday to France.*

*based on actual childhood experience

French MIL and DH. At MILs house breakfast is from the boulagerie and fresh baguette with butter and/or strawberry jam, croissant, pain au chocolate, brioche with hot chocolate for the children and milky coffee for adults served in bowls.

@Alighttouchonthetiller
I bloody loved Sugar Puffs. You could put your face in the bowl and they'd stick all over you so you looked like a medieval peasant with some sort of terrible skin lurgy.

Glad it wasn't just me who found that hilarious as a small kid!

Choco Pops. They are the greatest, far superior to the British version.

This

My DS prefers a sugar-laden breakfast cereal first thing and then a pain au chocolat as a second breakfast. The best of both worlds!

Our kids used to live what we called ‘French breakfast’ when camping there. A bowl of milky hot chocolate with baguette on the side.

The campsite we are going lets you order fresh baguettes, croissants and pain au chocolats to pick up each morning. That is breakfast sorted for us. I'm already looking forward to it.

Every campsite in France I have ever been to has had a visiting boulangerie van every morning. Every village I've ever been to has a boulangerie or 2 and most also have a patisserie. There is a law in France about how many boulangeries per head. I think it's 1 per 2000.

Breakfast cereal isn't a massive part of my French family's culture.