Lowcarbezine!

Product Reviews: Total and Special K

My local grocery store now has reduced carb versions of two popular cold cereals - Total and Special K. Though I don't miss cereal in general, there is one permutation of cereal that is on my "seriously missed food" list: Wheaties with sliced peaches. Don't ask me why, it's just one of those things - Wheaties with sliced peaches (and during my I'll-eat-whole-grains-but-not-sugar phase, Nutrigrain Wheat Flakes with sliced peaches) has always been among my very favorite things to eat. Weird thing to be passionate about, huh? But there it is.

Anyway, I know a lot of people do miss cold cereal, so I thought in incumbent on me to give these a try.

Accordingly, I bought the low carb Total first. I confess, the original Total is not a cereal I ever paid much attention to back in my cereal eating days. I figured it was just Wheaties with some vitamins sprayed on it, and since I took my vitamins every day, what was the point of spending the extra money on extra-fortified cereal? So I cannot tell you how low carb Total compares to original Total.

I can tell you, however, that it is not much like Wheaties. In this, I was quite disappointed. The flakes are very crisp - too crisp to really seem like cereal; they lack the delicacy of your standard cereal flake. Furthermore, low carb Total is very sweet. I realize that having shunned sugar for as long as I have has made my palate more sensitive to sweetness, but still, this was sweet enough that it almost seemed like a kiddie cereal to me. Low carb Total doesn't actually taste bad, mind you, but it wasn't what I was hoping for at all, and I wouldn't be likely to buy it again.

In the plus column for low carb Total is the fact that it doesn't have soy in it, and that it has enough protein that it doesn't cause serious rebound hunger or cravings for me - 13 grams if you eat the rated serving.

In the minus column is the fact that in order to keep that all important "net carb" number on the label artificially low, they've decided that a serving is just 3/4 cup. I know of no one who would consider 3/4 cup of cereal to be a bowlful, even a 1 cup serving seems a little skimpy - and a 1 cup serving would have about 11 grams of usable carbs, at least as General Mills calculates it. Considering that three eggs will give you 18-21 grams of protein, and just 1.5 grams of carbohydrate, I'd say this cereal is only for people who aren't seriously carb intolerant, and certainly isn't for people on any sort of Induction phase.

Also, low carb Total has sugar in it - indeed, it has more than one kind, including sugar, honey, and brown sugar syrup on the label, along with chicory root extract (a form of sugar alcohol or polyol) and maltitol. It seems like a bad idea to me to put sugar in a low carb cereal, and as for the sugar alcohols, they're enough reason not to eat this if you've got an interview, a presentation, a hot date, or any other event for which flatulence would be a disaster, on your schedule for the day.

How about low carb Special K, from Kellogg's? Again, my experience with original Special K is skimpy enough and long enough ago that I can't really make a comparison to that. However, I like this better than the low carb Total -- the texture is much more like "real" cereal, and it's nowhere near as sweet.

However, several of the same criticisms apply. Again, the serving size is listed as 3/4 cup to keep that "net carb" number low, but I found I had to eat over a cup to feel like I'd had a reasonable portion. Like low carb Total, low carb Special K has sugars of various kinds in it - the label lists sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and malt flavor, one right after the other. Further, low carb Special K is higher in carbohydrate and lower in protein than low carb Total - that 3/4 cup serving will give you 14 grams of carb and 5 grams of fiber, for a usable carb count of 9 grams - but just 10 grams of protein, or less than 2 eggs.

And Special K does contain soy, both soy grits and soy protein isolate. I am, as I have frequently noted before, iffy about soy. (If you want to know why I'm iffy about soy, go to the Lowcarbezine! archives at http://www.holdthetoast.com and take a look at the 4/11/2001 issue.) I would not eat low carbohydrate Special K regularly for this reason alone.

All told, I am unimpressed by the low carb cold cereal situation. Of the two, low carb Special K with peaches comes closer to my fond memories of wheat flakes with peaches, but not close enough, or low carb enough, for me to bother with it again.

Too, these are highly processed foods (as are their high carb counterparts,) and the only reason they have a decent vitamin and mineral count is because the vitamins are sprayed on at the factory. And they are even more expensive than standard cold cereal, which has long struck me as a conspiracy to charge $3.50 a box for 15c worth of grain.

In short, these two cereals exemplify a lot of what I find disturbing about many of the low carb specialty products flooding onto the market - they simply are not a substitute for real, unprocessed low carb foods - meat, poultry, fish, eggs, cheese, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and low sugar fruits. If you're tired of eggs, and want a quick, cool breakfast, better you should have some cottage cheese with a few strawberries or a little cantaloupe cut up in it, or some plain yogurt with sweetener and a little flavoring stirred in (and maybe those strawberries, as well.)

Even if you discover these cereals are to your liking, I can't recommend them as a regular part of your diet. Too high carb, too high in junk, too low in protein. Eat real food.

Posted by HoldTheToast at May 23, 2004 03:58 PM