Review: Multi Grain Cheerios Peanut Butter

Despite being a 70-year-old brand, Cheerios seems to fit right in with America’s latest (ostensible) push to become slender and healthy. With low sugar and only 110 calories per serving, the cereal has always held a place on the “healthy” side of pre-packaged grocery items. But admirable nutrition stats do not a diet fad make, and the past few years have found Cheerios coming out with a plethora of new flavors to keep customers interested. The latest of these is an addition to their Multi Grain flavor: Multi Grain Cheerios Peanut Butter.

Notice the hourglass shape of the peanut butter color in the background. Subliminal messaging!

General Mills was kind enought to send me a free box of this new Cheerios variety for review purposes, even though they already seem to have a pretty established opinion of this cereal on their own website:

New! Multi Grain Cheerios Peanut Butter cereal. Indulge in real peanut butter taste without derailing your diet.

Okay, that seems pretty straightforward. Cheerios wants me to have all the joy of a little kid eating a peanut butter sandwich without all the misery and pounds that ultimately result from eating all those sandwiches. So how did they taste?

The verdict: not too bad! Eaten dry, this cereal was sweet, lightly crunchy and definitely had a distinct peanut butter flavor to it. With the multi-grain pieces, a spoonful was redolent of a peanut butter sandwich.

BUT notice the word choice: redolent. Meaning, it evoked a peanut butter sandwich. By no means will this cereal satisfy a craving for real, rich, decadent peanut butter. If you are on a serious diet, this cereal will get you by like a nicotine patch to a smoker. But if you are anything like drunk me and have zero self-control, you will take one look at that box and head straight for the bread and the peanut butter jar.

Paired with milk, this Cheerios Peanut Butter gets even better. The milk tones down the crunchiness and rounds out the sweetness, making for a truly enjoyable, if somewhat light, breakfast. But again, if you’re part of what is obviously the Cheerios dieting target demographic, a light breakfast is what you’re going for.

Multi Grain Cheerios Peanut Butter is a decently tasty and peanut buttery cereal, but in the end, it’s still just a bowl of healthy cereal and not a peanut butter sandwich. Based on this fact, and the lack of truly extraordinary innovation, I give them a 6.5 out of 10.

The dieters can keep dieting. As for me, I have other plans.

This guy knows what I’m talking about.

See that? That’s a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.

As Quagmire from Family Guy would say: “Hehe…alllriiiight.”

One final note on product marketing. Be warned! The milk in the spoon does not splash up photogenically as seen in the picture on the box. It just kind of sits there.