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Your humble bowl of cornflakes might carry more risk than you know.
We can all admit cereal isn’t the healthiest breakfast option – but it’s convenient and relatively inoffensive. Most simple options like cornflakes and shredded wheat provide a source of fortified carbohydrates and natural occurring nutrients. And if you avoid the super surgery brands like Krave and Coco Pops you’re starting the day with a convenient, decent meal. At least, that’s been the general consensus.
But according to a new food-safety report from PAN Europe (Pesticide Action Network Europe), that humble breakfast ritual may be doing far more harm than good. Because lurking in those flakes (as well as the cereals found in bread pasta and pastries) is a ‘forever chemical’ called Trifluoroacetic acid (TFA). This small but pernicious member of the PFAS family is found – in many cases – at levels that ought to make us all spit out our breakfast.
PAN Europe’s December 2025 report is the first EU-wide assessment of TFA in everyday cereal-based foods, the kind that line supermarket aisles worldwide and are marketed as dietary staples. The authors collected 66 conventional cereal-derived products (including breakfast cereals) from 16 European countries – and found that 54 of them (81.8%) contained detectable TFA.
That’s not marginal contamination by any means. The average concentration across all positive samples was 78.9 µg per kilogram. But some items showed levels as high as 360 µg/kg. To put that into perspective, the mean TFA concentration measured in tap water is negligible in comparison. In fact, the cereal products averaged more than 100 times higher than those water levels.
Nearly all of those contaminated products would violate the European Union’s default safety threshold for substances classified as toxic. According to PAN Europe, wheat-based products are especially prone to accumulating TFA. On average they were nearly 7.7 times more contaminated than other cereals.
While the risk of TFA on public health, specifically the liver, has been widely researched, this is the first time a food safety authority has examined its presence in cereal-based products.
And it’s not just boxed breakfast cereals we’re talking about, either. TFA has contaminated the raw cereals found in bread and pasta, two foods considered low processed. As the wellness industry cracks down on ultra processed diets, these findings raise concerns about the lasting impact of forever chemicals on our everyday lives.
These are chemicals that resist breakdown, accumulating in the environment and our bodies.
Toxicological studies have linked TFA to adverse effects on reproduction, impairment of foetal development, hormone disruption, liver damage, immune-system problems and reduced sperm quality. This is a persistent contaminant once relegated to industrial runoff, that is now embedded in the food chain.
That means it’s not only our meals and our bodies that are affected. TFA is mobile, water-soluble, and accumulates in soil and waterways. Everything from soil to plants will be absorbing these chemicals at increasing levels.
