Friday, February 2, 2018

Weird Concept, Weird Execution: Strawberry Toast Crunch!


The Good: Nutritious enough, Comparatively inexpensive.
The Bad: Not strongly flavored
The Basics: General Mills Strawberry Toast Crunch cereal is sweet and odd, when it is not an unfortunately dull cereal.


Of all of the cereal types to franchise, Cinnamon Toast Crunch seemed like an odd one. The idea of cinnamon toast is fine enough and a clear concept; expanding beyond that is somewhat strange. Arguably, the strangest variation on the theme has come in the form of Strawberry Toast Crunch. Objectively, it's hard to even say what the point is of Strawberry Toast Crunch cereal; there does not appear to be an analogous product in real life. Strawberry toast?! Strawberry Toast Crunch seems like a desperate attempt to present the illusion of fruit into an obvious sugar cereal.

Basics

General Mills Strawberry Toast Crunch cereal is a new twist on a familiar old cereal – Cinnamon Toast Crunch has been around almost my entire life! It looks like a baked square flake made of baked oats and corn and generally sprinkled to look as if it was a mini piece of strawberry bread (like raisin bread) coated in powdered sugar. Each Strawberry Toast Crunch flake is approximately 1” x 3/4" and less than 1/8” thick. The white squares are fairly uniform in their appearance, though they do not particularly look like toast wedges.

The standard box of Strawberry Toast Crunch cereal is 11.1 oz. That represents approximately eleven servings and my box came out to just about eleven servings. This cereal is comprised of just the square cereal bits themselves, with nothing else in them.

Ease Of Preparation

Strawberry Toast Crunch 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 Strawberry Toast Crunch cereal, pour out three-quarters of a 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.

For the purposes of my reviews, and my regular consumption, I only use skim milk (fat free) milk with cereal.

Taste

Strawberry Toast Crunch smells very sweet and vaguely fruity. The cereal does have a basic strawberry aroma, though the scent is mixed with a sweet, frostinglike, smell.

In the mouth, Strawberry Toast Crunch changes with almost every bite. While many of the squares are sweet, few actually pop with the real and genuine flavor of strawberry. Instead of the vaguely sugary and generically dry, most of the squares of Strawberry Toast Crunch just taste like grain and sugar. There is a slight strawberry flavor on some of the "toast" pieces, but most are overwhelmed by the oat flavor.

With milk, Strawberry Toast Crunch tastes very grainy. The oat and corn dominates the palate, even more than the sweet, sugary coating. The strawberry flavor manifests entirely as an aftertaste, unfortunately. Even that hint of fruit flavor does not endure long before even milk overwhelms the palate.

Strawberry Toast Crunch, interestingly, does not leave an aftertaste in the mouth.

Nutrition

General Mills Strawberry Toast Crunch cereal is fairly nutritious on its own and with skim milk! Made primarily of whole grain oats, whole grain corn and sugar, the Strawberry Toast Crunch ingredient list is pretty simple and almost entirely recognizable. 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 Strawberry Toast Crunch cereal is 28 grams, 3/4 cups. In that serving, there are 120 calories, with 25 calories coming from fat. There is 1 gram of saturated, .5 g polyunsaturated, and 1 gram of monounsaturated fats in this cereal, but there is no cholesterol. With 120 mg of sodium and only a gram of dietary fiber, this is not a terrible dietary choice for those striving to improve heart health. With two grams of protein and 55 mg potassium, Strawberry Toast Crunch has some decent nutritional elements other cereals do not. On its own, this cereal has significant percentages of eight vitamins and minerals.

Storage/Cleanup

Strawberry Toast Crunch 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 Strawberry Toast Crunch cereal I purchased last week had an expiration date of August 5, 2018. 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 Strawberry Toast Crunch cereal is simple as well. Simply brush away crumbs left by it and you are done! It is that simple! This cereal does have dry flavored sugar powder that easily comes off its squares and that might need to be wiped up. If you get the colored milk from this cereal on your clothes, be sure to consult a fabric guide for how best to clean it out of your garments.

Overall

Strawberry Toast Crunch cereal does not taste bad, but outside its nutritional benefits, it is unfortunately lackluster from concept through execution.

For other General Mills cereals, please be sure to check out my reviews of:
Kellogg’s Cinnamon Jacks
Fiber One Honey Clusters
Post Grape-Nut Flakes

1.5/10

For other food reviews, please visit my Food Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the food reviews I have written!

© 2018 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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