Whole Grain Oat Honey Nut Cheerios

Reflecting on Kristine Liu’s blog about Whole Grain Oat Honey Nut Cheerios, I couldn’t help but wonder whether the companies who make the switch to health-conscious ingredients are voluntarily doing so, or forced to by market pressures of prevailing social trends. While I agree with Kristine that General Mills certainly does an excellent job marketing the tastiness of this enriched cereal, I’m sitting here lamenting the retirement of one of my favourite cereals, crying, “Oh how they butchered him so!” Needless to say, I was indeed very turned off with this evolution of breakfast staples and I resolved never to make the switch, even if the classic Honey Nut were to enter extinction.

But wait a second here. Did they actually change this tried and true recipe? Or is it in fact the same cereal, but merely the consumers’ perception that is being changed? Upon closer inspection, it’s really the same product packaged in a different box. And what’s different about this box is that it proudly proclaims its Whole Grain Oat ingredient. As far as I was concerned, Honey Nut Cheerios had always been an extremely health conscious choice as far as cereal goes (especially in the face of its sugar-loaded cousins and competitors out there). Not only that, but the soluble fibre in original Honey Nut Cheerios has been known to reduce cholesterol and heart disease risk, receiving such sanctions as from the American Heart Association for being “heart-healthy”.

So what’s the deal here? Is this Whole Grain stuff not really all that new OR improved? Checking out the back of my cereal box, it says quite clearly that the primary ingredient in Honey Nut O’s are Whole Grain Oats. So while the same cereal have always been just as healthy as ever, the only difference is that buyers are more aware of it.

And that’s an interesting thought to ponder: Are brands really pushing more healthy foods, or are they just more acute about its advertising aspects? Are people really eating healthier, or are they just more conscious of it?

One last thing that I’d like to point out, was when I looked at the photo of the cereal box on Kristine’s blog, I thought to myself, “Huh… Do those O’s look darker, or did they just happen to burn that batch?” Let’s do a quick side-by-side:

Now it definitely looks a lot darker don’t it? Clearly, they’re trying to show that this “new and improved” cereal is made of the healther whole grain oats by drawing a parallel between white bread and its healthier brown cousin. White bread is to unhealthy as brown bread is to healthy; similarly, white cereal is to unhealthy as brown cereal is to healthy!