Cereal too Sweet to Be a Meal

The Nature Valley folks recently sent me a box of their new cereal, Nature Valley Crunchy Oats ‘N Honey. It says on the box “with granola bar pieces” and since I happen to like their granola bars, I figured I’d like the cereal. Well…it was good, but it was so sweet it actually hurt my teeth. Now I have to admit that I don’t eat sweet cereal. I’m very old fashioned when it comes to cereal. I like your standard Rice Krispies, Corn Flakes, and Cheerios. I know. Boring! But it’s what I like. Oh, except for Honey Bunches of Oats. That stuff ought to be outlawed it is so good. I’ve eaten whole boxes of it.

Now, I’m not dissing this Nature Valley Oats ‘N Honey cereal. It’s good. It just isn’t my idea of breakfast food. But I did think it was good sprinkled over yogurt, a standard lunch meal for me, and I did try it over some vanilla ice cream. That wasn’t so great. The vanilla yogurt I used cut the sweetness and left the crunchy pieces intact, so there was a good smooth to crunchy ratio.

This appears to be a cereal that kids would like better than adults, as it is so freaking sweet. So I tried it on my own kids. Both of them liked it, but didn’t love it. My daughter, who is a huge advocate of the Nature Valley crunchy granola bars, thought that the pieces of the bars weren’t nuggety enough. OK. And my son, he thought it was too ‘natural organic’ for his taste. But he’s strictly a HoneyNut Cheerios man.

This cereal had no transfats, and a 1 cup serving was 230 calories dry, 270 with 1/2 cup of skim milk. Like people drink skim milk! I tend to look at sodium content, and it had a ridiculously high amount of sodium, 220 mgs. That’s a lot of sodium for me. It also had 48 grams of carbs, which seemed a bit high to me.

General Mills manufactures this cereal, so it has the boxtops for education coupon on the flap, if that means anything to you. I’m a collector, so I try and get cereals with this coupon to help our schools.

All in all, I’d give it a meh. It’s OK, not great, not terrible. But very sweet.