New Cereal Review: Kashi Berry Fruitful

Chances are if you’ve spent anytime in a grocery store over the past week, you’ve probably seen a veritable smorgasbord of new products. From chips to frozen diet dinners to cereals, the passing from one year to the next finds companies pushing new products with all the kind of energy and enthusiasm of Tony Perkis’ pushing his diet system.

Mmmm. Skim Milk. Speaking of diet program, that’s exactly what many companies are pushing. New Year’s Resolutions almost always revolve around food (unfortunately, if you ask me), and they’re not just confined to the proverbial eating healthier. These days, it’s not enough to just eat something that someone says is good for you, but it’s apparently our civic duty to eat something that’s good for the planet and the people involved in making it.

Does it really? Because nothing says “chocolate decadence” like black beans.

I’m all for doing good for the planet and supporting hardworking people, but there are times when I how far we are supposed to go when it comes to doing our small part. I bring all this up because I was rudely mocked on a recent facebook post by an individual who found it humorous that I looked forward to a cereal (the new Cheerios Medley Crunch) that did not conform to non-Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) standards. Frankly, the only thing more annoying at this point in our country than arguing about politics is to argue about food politics, and how you can find fault with America’s favorite cereal is beyond me. If you want to embrace a secular religion of wheat grass and $5.99 organic, avocado oil fair-trade potato chips and put down everyone who likes “the regular crap” as disastrous, money-grubbing fiends; well, I can’t stop you. But please. Don’t act like I’ve leading to the downfall of western civilization because I enjoy actual sugar in my cereal and could care less whether it’s been modified. I’ve been eating this ‘crap’ for years, and I’ve yet to sprout into Godzilla, so I’m not losing any sleep over it.

That comment got me thinking, however, and led me to seek out a new cereal that apparently meets just about every standard for being as close to nature as possible.  I mean, if said cereal is affordable, and it tastes just as good as my mainstream favorites, then there’s no reason to think I can’t become a regular buyer, right?  Kashi’s new Berry Fruitful seems to be one of those cereals. It’s  organic, its non-GMO verified, and it packs six grams of fiber and protein in only 170 calories. I, however, could care less about the first two parts of that equation. I’m more interested to see if this copy-cat version of the popular Frosted Mini Wheats Touch of Fruit variety has the potential to be more than just a cereal for “organic aisle” people.

While I enjoy the GoLean varieties of Kashi cereal, I’ve found the company’s wheat biscuit flavors to be underwhelming in the past. They just seem to lack the enough sugar coverage to make the taste anything but boring and plain, while the biscuits themselves shed wheat layers faster than Beethoven sheds fur on a humid day.

As you can see, each biscuit has a cyclops like “eye” of injected purple jelly. It’s really quite scary to look at, and reminds me of the creepy SAL 3000 from the cartoon Recess (watch here.)  The amount of jelly in each biscuit is almost microscopic, while there’s no exterior sugar-coating for crunch (think Frosted Mini Wheats.) According to the ingredients on the box the filling consists of concord grape juice concentrate, apple powder, raspberry puree concentrate, and strawberry puree concentrate. I am reminded, in no uncertain terms, that each ingredient is organic.

Each biscuit certainly tastes organic. Meaning it tastes just like the stereotype; bland, underwhelming and plain. To be fair, I actually  enjoy the filling. It has this comforting grape jelly flavor that’s not overly sweet, with a pectin like consistency falling somewhere between fruit leather and actual jelly. The problem is that there’s just nowhere near enough of the filling to give the rest of the biscuit flavor. Evaporated Cain Juice might be listed as the second ingredient on the box, but as is so often the case with the corn-syrup/sugar fill-in, it’s hard to detect. Seriously Kashi. Why can’t you just use good old-fashioned plain sugar? Or even honey for all it’s worth! At least I would be able to taste it!

The biscuits take on milk quite easily and turn pleasantly mushy when you bite down on them, but the flavor of the filling itself doesn’t get any lift, nor do the relatively tasteless wheat layers. It’s not bad, but I chalk it up more to an equal cut of skim milk and half-and-half, which I swear will endear any cereal with a certain creamy taste.

Once again, Kashi’s attempts to recreate a more “wholesome” version of Frosted Mini Wheats have failed. At only 8 grams of sugar for a 55 gram serving, it runs at a sweetness of just over 4 grams/ounce. To put that in perspective, the cereal has about the same sweetness profile as Wheaties. But in terms of discernible sweetness it might be even less, as the dull taste of evaporated cane juice syrup tastes like it evaporated right out of the cereal. With a dull exterior wheat taste that doesn’t have a toasted or malty flavor, the biscuits can’t  even be saved by a sophisticated and slightly tart grape filling. It’s a shame, because that filling would have pushed these over the top had Kashi made several tweaks to their wheat biscuit template. As it is though, this is just another flavor that has too little sugar and to break the stereotypes about organic cereals, and too little innovation to be anything but berry disappointing.

 

Kashi Berry Fruitful

• Price: $2.50 (on sale at Weis Markets)
• Ranking: 4/10
• Chances I’d Buy Again: 0%

Count Chocula

It’s that time of the year. Halloween. It’s coming. And while you anxiously await the first day of November in which you make your annual sojourn to Walmart to buy vastly discounted candy, you’ll have to spend the next two weeks settling for a cornucopia of full price scary-themed products.

For the cereal eater, October offers a chance to reconnect — or in some cases to try for the first time — the Monsters. Count Chocula, Frankenberry, and Boo Berry might not strike R rated horror movie fear into you, but like the heart racing cliff hanger in an actual monster movie, the first sight of the Monsters in stores leaves me on the edge of my seat every year.

Count Chocula, the progenitor of the trilogy if Halloween themed cereals, was first released in 1971, but it took me until the ripe old age of 22 to actually try it. Corn and marshmallow based, it’s known for being the cholatey foil to Lucky Charms, graced by the dentally challenged Count himself. Seriously, I haven’t seen a  one-tooth overbite like that since Conkers.

If limited edition doesn’t convince you to pick up a box, I’m assuming the seemingly unconquerable duo of chocolate and marshmallows will get you to Yet with similar cereals like Chocolate Lucky Charms now on the market year round, does Count Chocula really deserve its place as a must-buy each fall?

For me, the answer is still ‘yes.’ I start out as I always do — with a plain bowl for snacking. The standard cocoa and corn pieces are supposed to look like ghouls or goblins or something scary (bats?), but if you ask me they show a striking resemblance to the bad guys you stomp on in Mario. I go Yoshi on these guys and scoop them up onto my tongue, noticing a cocoa flavor with a medium yet hollow crunch. The cocoa flavor is moderate — not as strong as Cocoa Puffs , and by no means as rich as Krave or Mini Wheats Little Bites – but it’s respectable when eaten alone, and benefits from the sweet finish of the marshmallows, which seem to have a bit of vanilla flavor. I think the ‘mallows are supposed to represent ghosts. I actually enjoy them more than any other cereal marshmallow I’ve had, including Lucky Charms. As a snack, they serve to bind the cocoa crunch with a sweeter finish, and lend enough textural and flavor contrast to avoid completely mindness snacking.

If the combination of chocolate and marshmallows works dry, it dominates in milk. Even in skim milk, the cocoa flavor diffuses into the drink, leaving a sweet finish the end milk. The crunch remains strong even after a long soak, while the marshmallows take on a wonderful mouthfeel with a crisp vanilla flavor. While the cocoa corn pieces lose much of their cocoa flavor in milk, they remains sweet enough to keep things interesting.

There’s a reason Count Chocula comes back every year, and it’s not just because people like me enjoy reading the cartoons on the back of the box. If Swiss Miss has taught us anything, it’s that you just can’t go wrong with cocoa and marshmallows, especially when dairy is involved. What separates Count Chocula from, say Chocolate Lucky Charms, is the simple fact that Chocolate Lucky Charms’ marshmallows lack the dynamic vanilla and cocoa sweetness that the Count’s hold. While I’m not ready to proclaim chocolate Count Chocula as one of my must-have cereals to stock up on, it does warrant a yearly purchase for sure. Now, if only they could find some way to work in Candy Corn flavors, that would be truly epic.

Count Chocula

• Price: $2.50 (on sale at Safeway)
• Ranking: 8/10
• Chances I’d Buy Again: 100% (next year)

Cereal Throwdown: Blueberry Edition

One day, when I’m the head of a conglomerate of cereal and ice cream companies, my first order of business will be to increase the amount of underrated fruit flavors in cereal. Aside from prohibiting subsequent “Honey Nut” flavors and setting limits on the amount of Chex and Cheerios flavors produced, I’ll make sure to give Blueberry its proper seat at the breakfast table.

Maybe it’s because summer has finally arrived, or maybe it’s just because I’ve grown bored with cereals featuring maple or chocolate, but I’ve been on a real blueberry kick as of late. Problem is, Blueberry tends to be one of those flavors (much like Banana) that can never truly be copied in a packaged box, with attempts often coming out as cloying and artificial at best, and downright objectionable at worst.

Not that companies don’t try, and not that I’m going to give up on blueberry flavored cereals entirely. By some rare convergence of market forces, I even managed to find myself looking at three distinct blueberry cereals in my family’s pantry. Struck by this occurrence, I decided this bounty was bequeathed for one reason and one reason only.

Yes friends, a throwdown. Let’s get to it.

Blueberry Muffins Tops (Malt-O-Meal)

A cereal with cult like status for college age penny pinchers who frequently find it on the shelves of Super Walmarts, BMT is your standard Cinnamon Toast Crunch-type cereal with a twist. That twist is a beyond cloying blueberry sweetness matched only by a heavy coating of sugar crystals and tiny specks of blue. Each piece has an oily sheen and a crisp-fried mouthfeel, but the taste is classic blueberry muffin, albeit in the Hostess bakery sense. The exterior sugar coating is thick and almost sticky, making snackability  difficult if you should find yourself in a public place. But that sugary coating? Lets just say it would get the kids from Heavyweights expelled from Camp Hope. Surprisingly, the multigrain element does come through when you get past the initial sweetness, as does a strong blueberry flavor that isn’t so drowned out by thirst-inducing sugar rush. Still, one won’t find any sour or astringent notes, and the serving size equates to a very, very small amount of squares. In milk it has a tendency to take on liquid like the Titanic, but a dissemination of the surface oil leads to a cut in the sugar rush and an enjoyable chew.

• X-Factors: Buying in bulk at Super Walmart. Resealable bag.  DOES NOT GO BAD. Still made with hydrogenated oils.
• Best If You Want…The most insane sugar rush in a cereal you could ever imagine. Also, a Hostess blueberry muffin.
• Could use some…Milk. And lots of it. With so much sugar this stuff just makes you thirsty. Also, a single serving container. A simple “bowl” can get out of control, really, really quickly.

Special K Blueberry (Kelloggs)

It took me a while to finally convince my mom to let a non Chocolate Special K into the household, but as a snack cereal, I wasn’t overly impressed with the blueberry edition of the lineup. Not only does the cereal box scream an an ethos of “fit into that bikini by eating bland Special K!” but it contains no mazes or other fun cartoon characters. The base itself is somewhere between crispy and crunchy, but the rice element is bland and the flavor is a mild generic berry more than anything else. It’s not all bad news though. The little blueberry oat clusters have a needed crunch and malted sweetness, but like all cluster cereals they tend to sink to the bottom of the box. I toughed out a bowl in milk (skim milk, to keep with the Special K ethos) but aside from a light blue color, the end milk just tastes like the insipid water it is. The flakes disintegrate too easily in milk, and while the berry flavor is actually less masked by the multigrain base, it’s not enough to excite me. Unless, maybe, I was on a perpetual Special K challange, and had visions of myself fitting into that bikini this summer.

• X-Factors: Blueberry oat clusters. Moderate amount of sugar (8 grams).  
• Best If You Want…to lose weight while enjoying a mild blueberry flavor with, I’m presuming, a half cup of skim milk and a Lifetime movie.*
• Could use some…actual dried blueberries. A cup of heavy cream to wash it down with.

Frosted Mini Wheats Blueberry Muffin (Kelloggs)

For all the praise I’ve sung for the Little Bites this was actually the first time I went with any of the fruit flavored Mini Wheat flavors. As a snack I don’t think you can best the structure. The pieces are solid and have a nice glaze that’s very sweet, but the catacombs of wheat on the interior also have dots of blue that give a more subtle backnote of blueberry flavor, especially in milk. I’d say the flavor is more blueberry muffin than blueberry, and just a tad less sweet than Malt-o-Meal’s version. The flavor won’t give you any sour or tart notes, but it does strike me as a little higher class than Malt-o-Meal’s rendition. In milk the sugared coating takes on a sumptuous mouthfeel, while the wheat squares slowly disintegrate in layers, giving you different levels of a soggy crunch with backnotes of berry. The end milk is sweet and drinkable, and like Doug Heffernan looking down on his last spoonful of pudding, I find myself becoming sad as my food ends. That’s ok though, because the end-dust is like a crunchy version of a blueberry pixie stick.

• X-Factors: Talking Mini Wheat cartoon characters. Crunchy sugar coating. Respectable nutrition. Addicting end dust. Solid commercials.
• Best If You Want…Need a discreet blueberry muffin fix without sending yourself into a sugar shock.
• Could use some…Sugared blueberry coating on the naked side. Blueberry “goo” in the middle.

Winner: Mini Wheats Little Bites

Who are we kidding? When it comes to blueberry cereal, I’m of the mindset that you’re better going with the mass-produced, cloying taste of soybean oil and glycerin than anything remotely tasting like an actual tart and plump blueberry. But where Malt-O-Meal’s Blueberry Muffin Tops is way-over-the-top, Kellogg’s Mini Wheat version is just over-the-top, and has the benefit of being both a great and portable snack, and a “proper” spoon and bowl cereal.

Your Turn: Anyone got any favorite blueberry flavored cereals out there? And to the eternal question: which Mini Wheats and/or Special K cereal do you like the best?

*I’m not discriminating. Substitute an entire box of Waffle Crisp and an old college football game, and you’ve got my life.