The Good: Surprisingly decent vitamins and minerals
The Bad: Generically sugary flavor
The Basics: Kellogg’s Froot Loops Treasures cereal is unsurprisingly being clearance and with its generic flavor it will not be missed.
As cereal standards have diversified in recent years, it is surprising to me to see how the major breakfast cereal manufacturers try to reinvent the wheel to get new consumers. With standards like Kellogg’s Froot Loops, the slow addition of new colors to the mix (I swear, when I was a kid they didn’t have blue) has mostly been enough to keep the company happy. But every now and then, they tweak the familiar Froot Loops with something different. Enter Froot Loops Treasures, a cereal already being discontinued that added little pockets of strawberry-flavored pieces. The cereal is plagued by the same problems as usual Froot Loops, a cereal so indistinct in its sugary flavor that they can’t even use the word “fruit” in the cereal name.
Basics
Kellogg’s Froot Loops Treasures cereal is the standard Froot Loops cereal with additional pieces added to the mix. The standard Froot Loops are blue, purple, green, orange, yellow and green and are approximately 5/8” in diameter. The standard pieces are augmented by corn pillow pockets that are 7/8” long by 3/4” wide by 3/8” thick. The red pillow pockets are filled with a jelly-like gel that is intended to be strawberry flavored.
The standard box of Froot Loops Treasures cereal is 10.5 oz. That represents approximately ten servings and that seems to be about right.
Ease Of Preparation
Froot Loops Treasures 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 Froot Loops Treasures cereal, pour out a one cup serving (I recommend actually using a measuring cup, especially if you are monitoring your intake) 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.
For the purposes of my reviews, and my regular consumption, I only use skim milk (fat free) milk with cereal.
Taste
Froot Loops Treasures smell vaguely fruity, like the scent of a glass of lemonade after the lemonade has been consumed. The scent is very mild.
As for taste, dry Froot Loops Treasures cereal is overwhelmingly sweet. There is almost no genuine fruit flavor to the Froot Loops and the overwhelmingly sugary flavor finishes dry and like corn meal. The Treasures portions are legitimately fruity, once they are cracked open. The generic sweetness gives way to the flavor of strawberry jam, which is what the center seems to be made up of. The Froot Loops Treasures have a fairly dry aftertaste to them.
Covered in milk, the Froot Loops Treasures lose any real fruit flavor they possess . . . except in bites that have the actual strawberry Treasures. The sweet flavor carries into the milk and the trade-off is that the milk gets very sugary, while the corn loops simply maintain a grainy flavor. The bites with the strawberry Treasures explode with strawberry flavor when they are cracked open. That flavor fades quickly, though it is truly nice for the moments it is present.
The Froot Loops Treasures have a dry aftertaste that is followed by an aftertaste of sugar. The aftertastes linger for only a few minutes after the Froot Loops are consumed.
Nutrition
Kellogg’s Froot Loops Treasures cereal is surprisinlgy nutritious on its own and with skim milk! Made primarily of sugar, whole grain yellow corn flour and wheat flour. The Froot Loops Treasures ingredient list degenerates into a chemistry equation after “citric acid.” This cereal has some preservatives in it and it also has a separate list of vitamins and minerals, which means that this is a 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 Kellogg’s Froot Loops Treasures cereal is 30 grams, 1 cup. In that serving, there are 110 calories, with 10 calories coming from fat. There are only .5 grams of saturated and no trans fats in this cereal, nor is there any cholesterol. With 140 mg of sodium and three grams of dietary fiber, this is actually a really good dietary choice for those striving to improve heart health. With two grams of protein and 35mg potassium, Froot Loops Treasures has more going for it on the dietary front than one might suspect. On its own, this cereal has significant percentages of eight vitamins and minerals.
Storage/Cleanup
Froot Loops Treasures is a cereal, so as long as it is kept sealed in its box, it ought to remain fresh for quite some time. 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 Froot Loops Treasures 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 barely discolors the milk added to it, but because you should drink that up to get all the vitamins and minerals Kellogg’s added to the cereal, that shouldn’t be an issue with staining.
Overall
Froot Loops Treasures cereal is not the most flavorful cereal in the world, but it is strangely healthy, which saves it from being uneatable, but it is still not at all surprising that it is already being discontinued.
For other cereals, please be sure to check out my reviews of:
Apple Cinnamon Chex
Fiber One Honey Clusters
Maple Brown Sugar Frosted Mini-Wheats
3/10
For other food reviews, please visit my Food Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the food reviews I have written!
© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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