Thanks to a nobly health-food-conscious mother, growing up I was never allowed to wake up and eat a bowl of the alluring, overly sugared cereal that I would marvel over at the grocery store — packaged in boxes adorned with cartoon characters and often containing toys. It was only at friends’ houses that I ever got to get juiced up on offerings like Trix or Sugar Smacks, which was later renamed Honey Smacks in one of the earlier efforts to trick parents into thinking such breakfast cereals didn’t contain dessert-levels of sugar.
Decades later, despite various health organizations’ attempts to alert parents to high sugar content — in March, the World Health Organization suggested adults with a normal body mass index should eat around 25 grams (or 6 teaspoons) of sugar or less per day — not much has changed. A recent analysis of breakfast cereals by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) found that eating a bowl of many of the cereals marketed toward children everyday would be the same as eating 10 pounds of sugar a year.
Chances are if you’re not a parent, a stoner or an adult who has retained childlike taste buds (I will cop to being at least one of these), you haven’t spent much time examining today’s kid cereals. On a recent grocery trip, I grabbed a few boxes that seemed more fitting for the candy and cookie aisle than the breakfast one.
When I was young, even with my junk-cereal envy, I remember being stunned by the boldness of Cookie Crisp and how it straight-up said, “Have chocolate chip cookies for breakfast, kiddos!” Since I never tasted it back then (or since), I decided to give it a try. I’d always assumed Cookie Crisp would taste like those tiny chocolate chip cookies McDonald’s used to sell. While I expected that kind of cookie-like richness, the flavor was much more subtle. Still super sugary, but not quite the equivalent of crushing up a handful of Chips Ahoy! cookies and snorting them.
Another similarly bold General Mills cereal that goes the cookie-centric route is Hershey’s Cookies ’n’ Creme Cereal, based on the candy bar of the same name. But this one is a flavor fail — the tiny Cocoa Puff-like balls are fine, but the cookies-and-cream ones mixed in have a bland, indistinct flavor that ruins it.
Part of the EWG’s analysis included information on how various kids’ cereals use “nutrient content claims” (as well as ridiculously small “suggested serving sizes”) to distract parents from the sugar content. Honey Smacks (No. 1 on EWG’s list of the most over-sugared cereals) touts how it’s a “Good Source of Vitamin D” on its box. Cookie Crisp trumpets how it is “Whole Grain Guaranteed,” then lists the “Nutritional Highlights” (numbers that largely mean nothing to the majority of people buying it).
Cheerios have long been so reliably healthy and low in sugar that parents use them as a go-to snack for toddlers. The EWG study ranks Cheerios as the second best kids cereal (behind gluten-free Rice Krispies) in terms of low sugar content. But, in case you haven’t noticed, there are now a gazillion variations on the Cheerios theme. In terms of sugar, the Multigrain Cheerios Dark Chocolate Crunch has a not-so-toddler-friendly 9 grams per 3/4 cup serving. Its “graininess” has that familiar Cheerios flavor, which overtakes the chocolatiness, so it’s not even good for those who eat such cereals purely as a guilty-pleasure late-night snack. (And, sorry Nelly, but Honey Nut Cheerios are similarly over-sweetened.)
General Mills decided to expand on its Cinnamon Toast Crunch brand with Chocolate Toast Crunch, despite chocolate toast’s lack of existence in the natural world. It’s scrumptious, but purely in an “I have the munchies — should I have cereal or a supersize Snickers bar?” way. The same is true for Reese’s Puffs, which are essentially Reese’s Cups in Cocoa Puffs form and marketed with Hip Hop-heavy TV commercials. Another recent study, this one by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University, ranked the 10 “least healthful” cereals marketed to kids and found Reese’s Puffs to be eighth worse, while Cinnamon Toast Crunch ranked the No. 1 worst (the chocolate version is undoubtedly right up there with it).
A box on the “adult side” of the cereal aisle (differentiated largely by a focus on things like weight control and fiber, not to mention a complete lack of cartoon mascots) caught my eye.
Kellogg’s Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory Chocolatey Almond Cereal
is packaged in a dark, earthy-colored box with “mature” fonts, the “Rocky Mountain” distinction conjuring images of healthy hiking excursions. While tasty, it’s basically a mix of regular and chocolate-infused corn flakes with slivers of almond and small chunks of waxy chocolate. This grown-up junk-food cereal has 19 grams of sugar per suggested serving size — 1 cup. By comparison, the Cookies ’n’ Creme cereal claims to have 9 grams of sugar per serving (3/4 cup). Clearly, this is cereal for adults who want to eat the kid’s stuff on the down low.
CONTACT Mike Breen: mbreen@citybeat.com or
@CityBeatMusic
This article appears in Jul 16-22, 2014.