American cereal is weird
I've made no secret about the fact that I love cereal, which is why I dedicate so much content to it on this website. Although you probably shouldn't base your entire diet around cereal, it can be high in fibre, protein, and other micronutrients like vitamins and minerals.
My love for cereal has often drawn ridicule from American readers, and it wasn't until recently that I realised why this might be. It seems that here in the UK, our cereal is quite different to what you'll find in the US.
For example, Honey Nut Cheerios, was the biggest-selling cereal in the US in 2019. This blows my mind because here in the UK, it's not even really a cereal that we eat very often. However, normal Cheerios are the 7th most popular cereal in the UK.
The more I read about this, the more interesting it became. The team at General Mills (which owns Cheerios) filed a patent for an almond flavoring that was derived from almonds, but didn't contain any of the allergens. You can actually access this patent on the General Mills website here. (it's a download, so watch out if you don't want that). That patent was filed in 2006, which was the same time that almonds were removed from the Honey Nut Cheerios recipe.
The real question here is - why go through all this effort? It seems that the answer comes down to money. Almonds are quite an expensive ingredient to use in cereal, and this almond flavoring is much cheaper to create.
I just can't imagine any cereal company getting away with something like this in the UK. Imagine if they took the nuts out of Crunchy Nut? We'd all go mental.
Finn H
Finn is the editor of You Well and has been writing about travel, health, and more for over 10 years.