The Worst No-Sugar-Added Cereal On Store Shelves Comes From A Popular Brand

Cereal plays a big part in a lot of our lives, starting with a bag of Cheerios to teeth on, followed by Saturday morning cartoons and bowls of sugary, crunchy goodness to go with them. Most of the best breakfast cereal brands cater to both kids and adults nowadays. And there's thus a long list of no-sugar-added cereals to satisfy adult diets and preferences. We sampled eight no-sugar-added breakfast cereals, ranking them according to taste, texture, and crave-ability.

Surprisingly, the worst no-sugar-added cereal on store shelves comes from Kellogg's. We ranked Kellogg's Special K Zero Strawberry Crème last due to flavor more than anything else. Instead of the characteristic flakes you find in the traditional Special K line, Special K Zero Strawberry Crème features small circular puffs with a slight pinkish hue from all-natural beet dye. We appreciated the natural coloring as well as a whopping 18 grams of protein per serving, thanks to the addition of pea, lentil, and soy protein. The cereal had a nice crunch that all but melts in your mouth with each bite, but we couldn't get past the artificial taste of the strawberry. The flavor of the strawberry comes on strong, which was nice at first. But the finish of fake chemical taste lingers and ends up taking over the entire experience. Plus, while Special K Zero does in fact of 0 grams of sugar, it was almost cloyingly sweet, which did nothing to help the artificial strawberry flavor.

We went to the source by checking customer reviews on Kellogg's website. And with an overall score of 3.2 stars out of 5, customers were as unimpressed with Special K Zero Strawberry Crème as we were. "Artificial" and "fake" were the most common descriptors of the strawberry and creme flavor. One review noted that "they have a strange film they leave behind on your teeth and tongue. The flavor is very sweet, definitely strawberry. But the [aftertaste] and films ruined it for me." A chemical aftertaste was by far the biggest complaint across the board. Since both the sweetener and strawberry flavoring are artificial, customers debated on the cause, with one customer stating, "The taste of the artificial sweetener is overwhelming. I would rather have no sweetener." Yet another customer theorized that "this cereal has a horrible aftertaste due to one simple fact- the excessive added protein."

Whatever the case, one customer summed up our tasting experience by deeming the Special K Zero Strawberry Crème "a first-generation keto cereal. Initial flavor and crunch is good, but then it quickly dissolves into a mealy, gritty, dust with flavors of unnatural chemicals." The Special K Zero series has other flavors, and customers on Kellogg's website recommended the cinnamon flavor over the artificial Strawberry Crème. But, we weren't big fans of the cinnamon flavor, either, as it came in 8th out of 10 in our ranking of high-protein cereals.