Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Consumer Reports has a new report about how much sugar is in that breakfast cereal.
Copy and paste that into your browser for the full study.
The basic idea, is 11 popular breakfast cereals contain at least 40 percent sugar by weight. Two - Post Golden Crisp and Kellogg's Honey Smacks -- contain more than 50 percent by weight. Mmmmmm, sugar. That's like eating a glazed doughnut for breakfast. Mmmmm, forbidden doughnut.
The report did point out that four of the 27 cereals they analyzed are actually very good. Cheerios, Kix, Life and Honey Nut Cheerios have low sugar and high fiber. Add milk and fruit and you have a nutritious breakfast.
Doing this story this morning sparked some fun memories and conversation in the newsroom. We looked up old cereal commercials from the 1980s to use for natsound on the air. We also all compared the type of cereals we still eat, used to eat, were allowed to eat, and whined to our moms to let us eat.
We went through phases in my house from store-brand Cheerios, to Muesli to soaked barley with honey on it. By college I liked Raisin Bran Crunch, but would sneak my roommate's Marshmallow Mateys.
Paul McHardy says when he was young his mom let him eat a bowl of good cereal then a bowl of sugary stuff. But he says one bowl would fill him up so there went his fun breakfast.
Adam Thomas didn't even know regular Life existed. He thought there was only Cinnamon Life. Looking it up this morning, we found out Cinnamon Life is one-third of Life sales. But we couldn't find out how the new Honey Grahams Life is doing. Remember Mikey by the way?
We all agreed that our friends seemed to be able to eat more sugary stuff than we could when we were kids. We disagreed on Cap'n Crunch. I say it rips up the top of your mouth; Andrew Adams likes the peanut butter flavor; Adam loves the "Oops, All Berries Cap'n Crunch" because they keep making the same mistake and making more boxes.
I've never tried Smacks. But they did go from Sugar Smacks to Honey Smacks, to I think just plain Smacks. Same frog in the commercials though for years. The amazing Internet has just informed me it's back to Honey Smacks.
