The Good: Nutritious, Taste when dry, Comparatively inexpensive.
The Bad: Terrible aftertaste
The Basics: General Mills Honey Kix cereal is better dry than with milk.
Sometimes, I find it pointless to review some of the products I do. After all, many of the foods I have found of late I find on the clearance rack or discounted for one reason or another. For the ones that are discontinued, usually, there is little point in reviewing them as their product listing will fairly rapidly disappear. I’m not exactly sure why I was able to find Honey Kix discounted at my local grocery store for fifty percent off. I suspect, however, that it has something to do with it being gross.
In fact, while I seldom try to rate on taste alone, I keep downrating Honey Kix because of the way it tastes . . . and aftertastes. How this cereal ever came off the line is a bit of a mystery to me.
Basics
General Mills Honey Kix cereal is a new twist on an old cereal – Kix has been around my entire life! It looks like a smooth, hollow ball made of baked corn/corn meal. Each Kix sphere is approximately 3/8” in diameter. The yellow and brown (the honey coating adds some color to this cereal) spheres are fairly uniform in their appearance.
The standard box of Honey Kix cereal is 12 oz. That represents approximately ten servings, though I suspect it is really just one (I’m not relishing having another bowl of this!). This cereal is comprised of just the square cereal bits themselves, with nothing else in them.
Ease Of Preparation
Honey Kix cereal is a breakfast cereal, so this is one of the low-impact breakfast options as far as preparation goes! Simply open the box of Honey Kix cereal, pour out one and one-quarter cup (I’ve taken to using a measuring cup) and add 1/2 cup of milk to it. I have discovered, as part of getting healthy, that one of the biggest challenges one might have with breakfast cereal is actually eating the serving size recommended by the manufacturer. This is not a problem with Honey Kix, though, as it became an increasing challenge for me to eat the first 1 1/4 cups!
For the purposes of my reviews, and my regular consumption, I only use skim milk (fat free) milk with cereal.
Taste
Opening the box, the Honey Kix have a strong, sickly-sweet aroma to them. The box does not smell like honey, but it brings up instant scent memories of honey-coated cereals. This corn and honey-based cereal smells exactly like Honeycomb cereal from Post. To be honest, I’m not sure what that actually smells like; it is a smell that defines itself. Honey Kix smell identical.
On the tongue, the Honey Kix cereal was delightfully different, then familiar. Placing these Kix in the mouth, the sweet and (very) slightly tangy flavor quickly washes over the tongue. However, it dissipates ridiculously quickly as the puffed corn flavor of each Kix orb asserts itself! The familiar, light corn flavor that defines the inside of a Kix cereal piece remains present and distinctive even in the Honey Kix!
Covered in milk, the Honey Kix actually taste a little more sour and more like original Kix than they do when they are dry. In fact, this cereal quickly sweetens the milk and leaves the Kix tasting virtually identical to the original Kix flavor cereal.
Unfortunately, the more of this cereal I consumed, the more I discovered its fatal flaw. This cereal, more than any other I have tried of late, has a horrible, sour aftertaste that it leaves in the mouth. This taste endures until one brushes their teeth and it is distractingly foul.
Nutrition
General Mills Honey Kix cereal is fairly nutritious on its own and with skim milk! Made primarily of whole grain corn, corn meal, and sugar, the Honey Kix ingredient list degenerates into a chemistry equation after “caramel color.” This cereal has some preservatives in it, but it also has a separate list of vitamins and minerals, which implies that this is another cereal that has nutrients sprayed onto it. That makes it very important to drink the milk after one has consumed the actual cereal.
A single serving of General Mills Honey Kix cereal is 33 grams, 1 1/4 cups. In that serving, there are 120 calories, with 10 calories coming from fat. There are no saturated, trans, or monounsaturated fats in this cereal, nor is there any cholesterol. With 190 mg of sodium and 3 grams of dietary fiber, this is not a bad dietary choice for those striving to improve heart health. With two grams of protein and 75mg potassium, Honey Kix has some decent nutritional elements other cereals do not. On its own, this cereal has significant percentages of nine vitamins and minerals, most notably 50% of the RDA of Iron and Folic Acid!
Storage/Cleanup
Honey Kix is a cereal, so as long as it is kept sealed in its box, it ought to remain fresh for quite some time. The box of Honey Kix cereal I purchased on June 8, 2012 had an expiration date of October 1, 2012. It will be interesting to me to see if I actually manage to finish it before then. Obviously, when you are done pouring the cereal from the box, fold down the plastic inner wrap to help maintain the cereal’s freshness.
Cleaning up after Honey Kix cereal is simple as well. Simply brush away crumbs left by it and you are done! It is that simple! This is a cereal that does not even discolor the milk added to it!
Overall
Honey Kix cereal might be healthy, but with milk, it ends up tasting bad enough where it is impossible for me to recommend it.
For other cereals, please be sure to check out my reviews of:
Quaker Cinnamon Life
Special K MultiGrain Oats & Honey
Kellogg’s Fiber Plus Antioxidants Cinnamon Oat Crunch
3.5/10
For other food reviews, please visit my Food Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the food reviews I have written!
© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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