Flavor Tried: Chocolate
Price: $9.99 per box
Nutrition: 180 Calories, 9g Fat, 7g Carbs (5g Fiber & 0g Sugar), 22g Protein
Kellogg’s has a new protein cereal to add to their current line of protein cereals, but this one is branded to appeal to a different audience.
Special K cereal is thought of as an old-school brand (although their protein cereal is surprisingly solid) so Kellogg’s decided to do a 180 and market directly towards Gen Z with this “Eat Your Mouth Off” cereal.
As someone with a branding background, I’d say they went way over the top with their branding efforts, but this is a review based on taste, not branding.
It’s worth noting that this cereal was $10, which is quite absurd. Maybe by the time you read this the price will have come down a bit, but that’s more than most other protein cereals on the market.
You have to expect to pay a premium for protein cereal, but generally anywhere from $6 to $8 is the range you’ll see for a box.
Nutritionally, this “Eat Your Face Off” protein cereal is incredibly impressive.
180 calories and 22 grams of protein is more impressive than most protein bars. For reference, the Special K protein cereal contains 240 calories per serving and 20 grams of protein, so this one is even more favorable.
Ingredients-wise, there isn’t a whole lot going on here. The main sources of protein are soy, pea protein, and lentil, which doesn’t get me super excited from a flavor standpoint.
It looks like this cereal is rounded out with sucralose and stevia as the sweeteners, something I am hoping they don’t go overboard with.
When I opened the box, I was surprised by the lack of a chocolate scent. I was hoping there would be a chocolatey aroma, but it mostly just smelled like sweeteners.
The cereal pieces themselves are like puffed-up cocoa pebbles, and they’re shockingly light. When I took a handful, there was hardly any weight to it.
But you don’t care how much the cereal weighs, you care what it tastes like.
It tastes… bad.
There is a very subtle chocolate flavor, with the main flavors coming from pea protein, lentil, and sugar substitutes. There is no arguing that this is a plant-based snack, and the strong sugar substitute flavor doesn’t do it any favors.
Things somehow got worse once I added milk.
This Eat Your Mouth Off cereal became soggy instantly in milk, leading to a completely mushy cereal. If it had good flavor, this might be somewhat tolerable, but when you combine mushy cereal with terrible flavor, there is nothing redeeming left.
The one thing that this cereal has going for it is the impressive macros. 180 calories, 22 grams of protein, and no sugar is as impressive as you’ll see. But at what cost?
This cereal truly does not check any boxes outside of the nutrition facts. The texture is unpleasant, it gets soggy in milk, there’s a strong artificial sweetener flavor, and it hardly tastes like chocolate.
Maybe Kellogg’s will realize they missed horribly with this one and improve it in the future, but it’s more likely that this product ends up getting pulled off shelves and they attempt this once more under a new brand name.
Time will tell.
Update: I was curious if I was being too tough of a critic, so I hopped on Instagram to see what people were commenting on their posts. Turns out I am not alone.
The people demand better.
