Confusa clusters: a "yogurt-coated," "high-fiber" romp through the cereal aisle.

If health sells anywhere in the supermarket, it's in the cereal aisle.

You don't pick a cereal as much as you do a health problem ("Can help lower cholesterol," "May reduce the risk of stroke," "Lose 10 pounds the heart healthy way," "Optimized glycemic response") or a diet strategy (South Beach, Weight Watchers, Special K, GoLean).

Or, you go by which ingredients are missing ("low carb," "75% less sugar," "no trans fats") or which are present ("rich in antioxidants," "Fiber One," "Protein Plus," "whole grain").

Either way, the competition for your eyeballs, your health concerns, and your pocketbook is fierce. Here's how to ignore the latest fads (like fake yogurt coating or a dusting of whole grains) and focus on the ingredients that count.

We gave whole-grain (or mostly whole-grain) cereals two possible paths to a Best Bite and one way to become a Super-High-Fiber Best Bite:

1. Low-Sugar.

Cereals like the original Cheerios, Wheaties, and Total are Best Bites and are hard to criticize. After all, a bowl of Wheaties or Total is basically whole wheat with a little sugar and some vitamins. And all three brands easily stay under our limit of eight grams of sugar per one- or two-ounce serving.

But at three grams of fiber per serving, none of them give your breakfast a strong push toward the latest daily fiber targets from the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine:

* 21 grams for women 51 or older

* 25 grams for women 50 or younger

* 30 grams for men 51 or older

* 38 grams for men 50 or younger

The average American gets only about half those levels, which are designed to reduce the risk of heart disease. Fiber may also help prevent diabetes, constipation, diverticulitis, and obesity.

2. High-Fiber.

Shredded wheat, with six grams of fiber and zero sugar per serving, clearly deserves a Best Bite. But so do other whole-grain (or mostly whole-grain) cereals that are high in fiber (at least five grams per serving), regardless of how much sugar they have. We lifted the sugar limit because of:

* Fruit. We didn't want to penalize high-fiber cereals--mostly raisin brans--that get sugar from fruit as well as corn syrup and other added sweeteners. Unfortunately, Nutrition Facts panels don't distinguish between added sugar and sugar from fruit.

* Weighty servings. Many high-fiber cereals are heavy (often thanks to their fruit or bran), so their serving size is typically two ounces, versus one ounce for lighter cereals like Wheaties or Cheerios. Even so, few of our high-fiber Best Bites had more than 16 grams of sugar. That's no worse than the 8-gram sugar limit for cereals with less fiber. Exception: added sugar plus sugar from the fruit in raisin brans brings their total to around 20 grams.

3. Super-Hitch-Fiber.

More than a dozen popular, mostly whole-grain cereals have at least 8 grams of fiber, enough to send you galloping toward your daily fiber goal. Those are the Super-High-Fiber Best Bites in our chart.

And your options now go beyond the tiny pellets in All-Bran to the flakes, clusters, and more in cereals like General Mills Fiber One Honey Clusters, Weetabix Organic Crispy Flakes & Fiber, and Kashi Good Friends.

Just remember that fiber isn't everything. As the cereals on pages 11 and 12 show, a handful of claims, ingredients, and tricks can trip you up.

The information for this article was compiled by Danielle Weinberg.