The times of anybody with any concern for his or her well being contemplating most breakfast cereal “a part of an entire breakfast” are lengthy gone. To be trustworthy, that complete presentation was a bit bizarre anyhow, on condition that it was proven subsequent to what seemed like a complete lodge breakfast bar, a supposed day-starter able to making a horse vomit. Nonetheless, even in affordable parts, most individuals have clued in to the truth that our favourite cereals had been roughly a car for processed sugar, no matter what fruits they might have been formed into by some extruder.
Let’s say you stroll the left-hand path breakfast-wise, nonetheless. You might be one of many few that indulges in breakneck hedonism as quickly as your rise every morning. You don’t eat the wise, ennui-riddled meal that’s an Grownup Breakfast. No steel-cut oats, no plain yogurt, nor my private breakfast of selection, a mug of black espresso and a 50-milligram Zoloft. If horrifically unhealthy breakfast cereal is your favored each day sin, then what cereal is absolutely the worst you could possibly select?
Initially, it surprisingly isn’t any of those you’d assume. If a gun was held to your head, like an instantly cancelled spin-off of Household Feud, and also you had been compelled to call what you’d assume had been the unhealthiest cereal, you’d most likely rattle off a number of the ordinary suspects: Cookie Crisp. Reese’s Puffs. Fortunate Charms. Possibly Fruity Pebbles if you happen to’re going off the overwhelmed path. Nope, selecting the cereal to put a sugar-crystal crown on the forehead of turns into a knock-down, drag-out combat between two cereals that conceal their horrors below a remarkably beige exterior.
These two cereals are Golden Crisp and Honey Smacks. The 2 rivals share similarities. They’re each formally described as “sweetened puffed wheat.” They each have a mascot that makes you go, “Oh yeah, that man.” Lastly, they’re each, by weight, greater than 50 % pure sugar. In actual fact, sugar has all the time been their M.O., a lot in order that each have gone although a rebranding, initially named “Sugar Crisp” (nonetheless is, in Canada) and “Sugar Smacks.” Clearly, as we bought nearer to the twenty first century, manufacturers shied away from having the phrase “SUGAR” emblazoned throughout meals they had been making an attempt to get mother and father to feed to their children. Therefore, the code phrases “Golden,” which is pure nothingness, and “Honey,” which is sugar with a wholesome hat on.
So let’s enter the Diabetes Dome and see which emerges because the sweetest of all of them. The victor, by a bear’s nostril, is Golden Crisp. In a single 38-gram serving, there are 21 grams of added sugar, on a diet label that’s largely occupied by zeroes in any other case. Which means it’s 55 % sugar. It ought to most likely be marketed as “sugar with a crunchy cereal core!” There’s a half gram of fats for good measure, and a couple of measly grams of protein, the equal of a fitness center rat’s cough.
So how brief does frog-fronted Honey Smacks fall? Thirty-six grams of Smacks include 18 grams of sugar, sufficient to take it to the midway mark, however not fairly past the gates of saccharine Valhalla. It accommodates the identical fats and protein content material as Golden Crisp. However there’s one remaining nail in its coffin (at the very least by way of ending second within the race to the dietary backside): It accommodates 2 grams of dietary fiber, which medical doctors, sadly, contemplate a vital a part of a nutritious diet.
