I was shopping around today for a nutritious cereal. Something low in calories without a lot of fat and sugar. After comparing several cereals including Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Special K, Pops, Cheerios, Total, and Honey Nut Cheerios I noticed that the Cheerios brand by General Mills was the only cereal from the ones I looked at that said its serving size is 28g. All the other types of cereals I looked at had their serving size as 31g. That means Cheerios nutritional facts will always be artificially lower than their competitors and I have no doubt that General Mills is aware of this.
Comparing the nutritional facts of Cheerios with their competitors is like comparing apples to oranges. They’re not the same. To make the comparison from apples to apples you’d have to divide every number in the Cheerios nutritional facts by 28 to get the number per gram (such as number of calories per gram) and then multiply all the results by 31 to find out that number per 31g. General Mills is obviously hoping you won’t go through all the trouble, or you won’t notice the gram difference, and compare their orange to all the other apples and be fooled by the numbers. I still don’t know how many calories there are per 31g of Cheerios but I do know that number for Special K, Total, etc. because it is on their boxes.
This is a very dishonest practice by General Mills and I’m recommending that no one purchase a General Mills cereal until they fix this discrepancy and make their serving sizes 31g just like their competitors do.
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<–email this to a friend! 
i think it sucks BIG TIME.
By: alicia on September 25, 2008
at 12:52 pm
On the one hand, that practice does tend to understate the calorie content. But on the other hand, they are claiming LESS of the “good stuff” than they could if they were using a 31 gm portion. IOW, things like vitamins, minerals, and fiber would go UP if they switched to a 31 gm portion. So you could argue that, for example, Total is OVERSTATING their vitamin content by using a LARGER portion.
Obviously, if 31 gms really is an industry standard, then everyone should stick to that. Then all nutritional content, whether “good” or “bad” would be on the same basis.
By: Fred on January 9, 2009
at 1:42 pm