The Cheerios Sugar Factor
Like many people, I often eat cereal for breakfast. When my wife went on a no-sugar diet a while back, it wreaked havoc on our cereal eating habit because, you see, most breakfast cereals are stuffed with sugar or high fructose corn syrup.
Reading the nutrition labels, however, taught me something interesting: Cheerios has by far the lowest sugar content of any cereal we eat. While shopping, I found myself in disbelief, telling random people in the super market, “Do you know this stuff has twelve times as much sugar as Cheerios?” I started calling it the Cheerios Factor.
To give you an idea, here is a list of some breakfast cereals and their sugar content. Full nutrition information is available online from General Mills, Kellog’s and Quaker. However, Post prefers to summarize it for you.
Cereal | Serving Size | Sugar | Factor |
Apple Jacks | 28g | 12g | 12.0x |
Froot Loops | 29g | 12g | 11.6x |
Lucky Charms | 27g | 11g | 11.4x |
Frosted Flakes | 30g | 11g | 10.3x |
Golden Grahms | 31g | 11g | 9.9x |
Cinnamon Toast Crunch | 31g | 10g | 9.0x |
Honey Nut Cheerios | 28g | 9g | 9.0x |
Raisin Bran | 59g | 19g | 9.0x |
Cinnamon Life | 32g | 8g | 7.0x |
Honey Bunches of Oats | 30g | 7g | 6.5x |
Multigrain Cheerios | 27g | 6g | 6.2x |
Frosted Mini Wheats | 51g | 10g | 5.5x |
Life | 32g | 6g | 5.3x |
Total | 30g | 5g | 4.7x |
Wheaties | 27g | 4g | 4.1x |
Special K | 31g | 4g | 3.6x |
Rice Krispies | 33g | 4g | 3.4x |
Corn Flakes | 28g | 3g | 3.0x |
Kix | 30g | 3g | 2.8x |
Corn Chex | 31g | 3g | 2.7x |
Rice Chex | 27g | 2g | 2.1x |
Grape-Nuts | 58g | 4g | 1.9x |
Cheerios | 28g | 1g | 1.0x |
Fiber One | 30g | 0g | None |
Yes, Cheerios has half the sugar of Grape-Nuts. The only cereal I’ve found that beats Cheerios at its own game is Fiber One, which I’ve never actually eaten.
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