More Cheerios

The latest of the many (many!) kinds of Cheerios is Cheerios + Ancient Grains, which is a medley, if you will (or even if you won't), of Cheerios; clusters containing oats, quinoa and crisp rice; spelt; Kamut (a brand name for the ancient grain called Khorosan wheat or Oriental wheat), and the usual list of miscellaneous cereal ingredients.

The resulting mixture is a little denser than regular Cheerios, so whereas a 28-gram serving of regular Cheerios is 1 cup, the same serving by weight of Cheerios + Ancient Grains is only three-fourths of a cup. The new cereal is fortified with vitamins and minerals almost identically to regular Cheerios, and the nutrition profile of the ¾-cup serving mostly differs only marginally from that of the 1 cup of regular Cheerios (2 grams of fiber instead of 3 and 110 calories instead of 100). There are two larger differences.

First, the 28 grams of regular Cheerios includes 23 grams of whole grains, but the same weight of Cheerios + Ancient Grains has just 17 grams of whole grains. And second (accounting for most of that 6-gram difference in whole-grain contents): The cup of Cheerios has 1 gram of sugars; the 3/4 cup of Cheerios + Ancient Grains has 5 grams of sugars. (Mr. Tidbit guesses that he wouldn't enjoy Kamut, spelt and quinoa without a little sweetening.)

At one store, the 11.6-ounce box of Cheerios + Ancient Grains was $3.59, 31 cents an ounce; the 12-ounce box of regular Cheerios was $2.99, 25 cents an ounce.

Guess how many kinds of Cheerios there are now. No, come on! Guess! No cheating. The answer is at the bottom of the next item.

Bar none

What could be new in granola bars? Granola that isn't in bars! That is, granola in little single-serving pouches. New from Post's Great Grains, two varieties of the Bar Undone granola snack mix: Dark Chocolate Nut and Cranberry, Nuts & Seeds. The 7.05-ounce box of five 1.41-ounce pouches was $3.99 at one store, where numerous kinds of granola in actual bars, in boxes of similar total weight, were under $3.

There are 15 kinds of Cheerios.

Al Sicherman