them tarty pops so sweet

[darkoshi]

Last year I found out unfrosted poptarts are vegan. (The frosted ones contain gelatin.) That made me nostalgic, so I bought a box each of unfrosted cinnamon and strawberry poptarts. They still taste like I remember from childhood. Sugary-sweet morning memories; memories that go along with Saturday morning cartoons on the TV. Flintstones, He-man, Thundercats Ho!

Did you know even a single unfrosted poptart contains 12 grams of sugar, which per the nutrition panel is 24% of the recommended daily intake? (Contrary to what I'd expect, the frosted ones purportedly don't have much more sugar than the unfrosted ones.) That is one reason I haven't eaten up these 2 boxes of tarts yet; I only take them out once in a big while as a treat.

I heat mine in the toaster, but the microwave heating instructions on the box surprise me:
"Heat 3 seconds at a time until warm enough."

Does Kellogg's truly expect anyone to start and stop their microwave every *3* seconds to check on the warmth of their tarts? I am guessing those instructions are to avoid any lawsuits due to accidental over-heating of the tarts, since some microwaves heat a lot faster than others. But I wonder if three seconds may not even be long enough for a microwave to start emitting its rays. My microwave generally needs to run for a minimum of 20 seconds to result in any noticeable heating of the food.

Comments

[lhexan]

I was similarly startled several years ago to discover that children's cereal has roughly the same calories per serving (and the same serving size) as the less fanciful brands.

[darkoshi]

Do they? I bought a generic-brand frosted flakes a few years ago (mistaking it for corn flakes as the boxes were nearly identical), and they were so sweet I didn't even want to mix them in with other cereal. I recall other children's cereals being very sweet too. But I occasionally like peanut-butter-puffs-style children's cereal, which doesn't taste as sweet to me.

Comparing some of the kinds of cereal I eat for sugar by weight:

Peanut-choco puffs: 26%
Raisin bran: 25% (total sugar); 11% (added sugar only).
Granola with raisins: 23(total); 17% (added).
Other granolas: about 20%
The ones with the least sugar have 10% or less of sugar by weight. I often mix those together with the granola.

So the children's-style cereal does have the most sugar, but the granolas come close.

Cascadian Farm has a line of cereal with "No added sugar / sweetened with fruit" which initially tasted quite good to me. But now the blueberry granola one has stopped appealing to me. I still like the others, but they definitely do have a different kind of sweetness than other cereals which isn't always what I want.

Ah, but you mentioned calories, not sugar.....

Peanut butter puffs: 3.95 cal/gram
Raisin bran: 3.28 cal/gram
Granola with raisins: 4.17 cal/gram
Other granolas: 4.67 to 5 cal/gram
Least sweet ones: 3.9 to 4.5 cal/gram

So you are correct about the calories! That's probably because the very sweet children's cereals tend to have less included fats.