Review: Special K Nuts and Seeds Cereal

Ah, cereal. A product for breakfast, the most important meal of the day, etcetera etcetera. At least according to the likes of cereal manufacturers. This a product type long dominated by ‘nutrition theatre’, at least since the 1980s with Alpen and other sugar-laden muesli trying to pass themselves off as ‘healthy’ – when the reality was that it was only a bit ‘less worse’ than your kid’s Coco Pops. So, I approached this product with a rather high level of cynicism.

So, the packet; lots of green, pictures of nuts and so on. The front telling me that it contains protein (but precious little doesn’t) and that it’s high fibre (again subjective), on the back a couple of paragraphs of vague nutritional happy-talk. The inner marketer within me has to applaud Kellogg’s people for this; they strike the perfect balance between ‘healthy’, ‘normal’ and ‘natural’, in my opinion.

I open it up, look inside. Basically, looks like bran flakes with some nuts and seeds in it. I give myself a little bowl with milk, tucked in. The taste was the same as the looks; bran flakes with nuts and seeds. Has a bit less of the ‘roughage’ taste bran flakes has (due to the differing ingredients) and I’m not a fan of whatever those green seeds are. But on the whole it’s nothing I can overly object to.

On the crunching of the numbers; the nutritional claims don’t really add up – it’s still primarily a bowl of carbohydrate, and no amount of nut sprinkles is going to make much of a difference on that. Sure, it has protein; but only fractionally more than the bran flakes I normally consume – and I only eat that for the fibre content. Of which this product only has around half of. Provided at a price around 400% what I normally pay for either my bran or porridge oats.

The best things I can say about this product is that it doesn’t taste like complete crap and it’s a touch better for you than some of the even more sugar-laden cereals out there. But apart from that, this product has no merits whatsoever.

Facts:

Full Name: Special K Protein Nuts, Clusters and Seeds

RRP: £3.00 (330g)

Available At: Morrisons, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Asda.

Ultimate Owner: Kellogg’s (United States).

Date of Testing: 5^th April 2020

As everything on this blog, merely my own thoughts and opinions. I’ve not received anything for this review. Facts correct at date of testing. Part of my Product Reviews series..