The Great Sugar Cereal Debate – Do you let your kids indulge in sugary cereal? If so, is it occasionally? Or for breakfast every morning? Cheerios now has “sugary cereal” options (and has for quite some time). In addition to the Great Sugar Cereal Debate, we’re taste testing the Cheerios w/sugar brands and comparing them to their ultra sugary counterparts.
As a kid, My mom never bought sugar cereals for me, my brother or sister when I was little. Her version of splurging on sugary breakfast cereals was buying us Golden Grahams or Cinnamon Life.
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The Great Sugar Cereal Debate
I had some funny conversations about the kids eating sugar cereal dilemma recently at one of my kids’ school functions. Many of the moms I talked to were raised without them and forced to eat Cheerios or Corn Flakes every day while secretly yearning to gorge on Capt’n Crunch or Count Chocula. The lucky ones who were able to enjoy the yummier cereals bragged that they’d chow on chocolate pop tarts in addition to their Froot Loops.
I confess – I let my kids enjoy sugary cereals for breakfast or even as a pre dinner snack. I’m not wild about my kids eating the sugar cereals but there are a couple of reasons why I let them. One – I don’t let them have the sugar cereals too often. Two – Strangely, because of my daughter’s severe food allergies, the only cereal she could eat for a while was Lucky Charms (minus the marshmallows).
Because of a strict elimination diet, my daughter’s severe food allergies and EE (Eosinophilic Esophagitis) are significantly better. She’s back on a more regular diet and her cereal options are open. That said, I was still hesitant to let my kids go bonkers with Fruity Pebbles.
I noticed that Cheerios was coming in all sorts of sugar variations of Cheerios to compete with the sugar cereal kings. “Naturally Flavored” Fruity Cheerios is an attempt to go after the Froot Loops crowd, Chocolate Cheerios attacks the Cocoa Puffs demographic and Frosted Cheerios takes aim at Tony the Tiger’s Frosted Flakes. Channeling my mom’s 1980’s desire to get max cereal satisfaction for minimum sugar, I bought a couple of the sugar Cheerios to see if they held up taste-wise while minimizing the sugar.
Here are the results…
The Great Sugar Cereal Debate – Sugary Cheerios vs Their Counterparts
- Fruity Cheerios vs. Kellogg’s Froot Loops – You save 3g of sugar per serving but Fruity Cheerios still packs a sugar punch at 9g of sugar per serving. I certainly didn’t prefer the Fruity Cheerios to Froot Loops either. The “natural flavor” tastes like sno-cone syrup. Even my daughter told me she likes regular Cheerios better than the Fruity ones. If you’re hankering for Froot Loops, don’t look to the Fruity Cheerios as a legit substitute.
- Chocolate Cheerios vs. Cocoa Puffs – Chocolate Cheerios only has 1 gram of sugar per serving less than a serving of the Cocoa Puffs. Chocolate Cheerios tastes far better to me than the Fruity version of Cheerios. My son and husband like the Chocolate Cheerios better than the Cocoa Puffs, but my daughter and I prefer the chocolate flavored corn puffs. and I have to say I agree. Taste wise, this one’s a draw.
- Frosted Cheerios vs. Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes – More of the same news here. Frosted Cheerios contains almost as much sugar per serving as Frosted Flakes (and that’s really saying something). There’s only a 2 gram per serving difference. Both my son and daughter passed on Frosted Cheerios in the taste test saying they liked Frosted Flakes better. Frosted Cheerios tasted really sweet and the frosted sugar just doesn’t taste right on the oat Os. It’s much more satisfying to crunch on the frosted corn flakes than it is to eat the beyond-sweet Os.
Overall, we had fun trying the different sugary Cheerios flavors. If you want to buy them because you think you’re saving on the sugar, think again. If you’re going to let your kids indulge in a sugar cereal, they may as well enjoy it and pick what they want because the sugar amounts are about the same. If you’re against your kids going coo coo for Cocoa Puffs, those non-sugar Cheerios don’t taste so bad after all.
Photo Credit – indianapublicmedia.org
Where do you stand on the The Great Sugar Cereal Debate?
