Fruity Cheerios

Four Props and Pans team members were recently sent samples of General Mills’ New Fruity Cheerios. They all tried it but did they all like it? Keep reading to find out!

My kids love cereal. In fact, I have a house full of super picky eaters, so I’d say that if it weren’t for cereal, a couple of my kids wouldn’t have eaten at all at various times in their lives. My rule around dinner time is that they have to try whatever it is I’ve prepared, but if they don’t like it they are always welcome to get themselves a bowl of cereal. It is also one of the default breakfasts on school days. A long way of saying, we eat a lot of cereal.

Along with the seeming metric tons of cereal consumption comes the cereal wars. They want the sugar cereals; I want them to have the basic cereals. I want to make sure the health benefits inherent in the cereal aren’t overridden by a bunch of overly sweet empty calories. Enter Fruity Cheerios.

Fruity Cheerios are just like Fruit Loops, but with a few differences: they are flavored with real fruit juice, they have 25% less sugar than “the leading Fruity Cereal” and they are made with whole grains. I’ve tried some reduced sugar cereals before and they were….well, frankly, yucky, so I was a bit skeptical about the Fruity Cheerios.

I was pleasantly surprised. This stuff is yummy. It is lightly sweetened, not overpowering. My kids ate it up and so did the adults in the house.

So I get to say I won this battle in the Cereal Wars.

~ by Mary

As a rule, my mother would never buy us cereal that had sugar as the third or higher ingredient. That ruled out many of the great cereals like Frosted Flakes, Lucky Charms, and Fruit Loops. I always thought I would break that rule when I ran my own household. Sugar cereals would be welcome in my home!

Not surprisingly, I am turning into my mother. No caffeine after noon. A good dinner looks pretty on the plate. And no sugar cereals. That is why I was disappointed in Fruity Cheerios. I thought for sure that Cheerios would never have sugar as the second ingredient of one of their cereals. In comparison, it does have 25% less sugar than Fruit Loops, but that just tells me that I really should never ever buy Fruit Loops either.

From the kid’s point of view though, they were acceptable. Eleven-year-old Lovely gave them a thumbs up qualified by them falling short of Fruit Loops and Honey Nut Cheerios.

~ by Canape

We were recently sent a box of Fruity Cheerios to try out. I figured my daughter might like them, as she’s a big fan of fruity stuff. I wasn’t too sure about my son, since he’s much more particular when it comes to breakfast cereals, especially anything flavored. He’s a HoneyNut Cheerios guy all the way.

My daughter decided to try them right away. She poured them into a bowl, added some milk, and dug in. After a couple of spoonful, she declared them “disgusting” and left the bowl on the table. She said that they tasted a lot like Trix, a cereal we’ve never bought before. I guess she’s had it elsewhere and doesn’t like it.

My son wasn’t eager to try the cereal knowing his sister, the fruity cereal girl, didn’t like it. But after begging, he poured some into a small bowl. Before he added milk, he tasted a handful and refused to even try it with milk. He said that they smelled like chemicals and tasted worse. Not a great start.

So I put my hand in the box and tasted some as well. They weren’t inedible, but they weren’t good either. Although General Mills claims that the cereal is made with real fruit, that fruit must be real only in the minds of the cereal maker. It was not good. Very chemically flavored, and it had an odd scent, much like some kind of fake fruit candy.

Now, I need to clarify that my family doesn’t eat much in the way of commercial cereals. We do eat both plain and HoneyNut cheerios, but any other type is just too flavored for our family.

~ by Margalit

Kudos to General Mills! I can’t believe they didn’t think of this years ago. We’ve all seen the commercials about how good Cheerios can be for you, but personally the bland taste wasn’t up my alley.

When I tried Fruity Cheerios I figured there was no way they would taste as good as the other leading fruity cereals. I was wrong, it was better! Not only did it taste great, but it retained its source of whole grains, 12 essential vitamins and minerals, and still came in at 25% less sugar than others.

Our 4 year old son grew out of the regular Cheerios a few years back, but these are definitely his new favorite. I think we’ve found a new staple that will always be in our pantry.

~ by Emily