As a participant in the General Mills Pssst… program, I periodically receive samples of General Mills’ products to try and to review. Recently I received a box of Fiber One 80 Calories cereal. It was the Honey Squares flavor.

The cereal had a nice flavor and texture. If I didn’t know it was a high-fiber cereal, I would not have guessed based on the texture or taste. I also liked the fact it was not overly sweet like garbage cereals. Because I use skim milk, I have almost given up eating cereal — most get way too soggy too quickly in skim milk. Though this cereal did start to get soggy near the bottom of the bowl, it stayed fairly crisp for a while.

I am not a nutritionist or dietitian, so I’m not going to give a full nutritional review of the cereal. That said, here are some things from the label: 3/4 cup provides 10 grams of fiber and 1 gram of protein. With 1/2 cup of skim milk, it provides 50% of the calcium needed in a day. It provides 25% of many other nutrients. Though the label says it has no trans fat, it does provide 0.5 grams of polyunsaturated fat. Because it also says it has 1 gram of total fat there has to be some somewhere else that doesn’t get reported because it is below a certain level. (I don’t remember the rules on that.)

There are just a couple of things I don’t like about this cereal: the serving size is only 3/4 of a cup, it gets soggy, the smell is more of a chemical duplication of honey rather than the smell of real honey. The soggy thing is going to happen with almost all cereals, so I just need to eat faster. The serving size bothers me a little bit.

I measured out 3/4 cup of cereal — I was still hungry. When I “eyeballed” a serving, I tended to pour closer to 1 cup. I compared the serving size to other cereals in our cupboard: Grape-Nuts 1/2 cup, Honey Nut Cheerios 3/4 cup, Multi-Grain Cheerios 1 cup, Kashi Golden Goodness 1 1/4 cup. Grape-Nuts is pretty dense and heavy. Kashi is pretty light. I have no idea why different flavors of Cheerios would have different serving sizes.

The fake honey smell did not bother me until I re-opened the box to write this review. At that moment it hit me that it was odd.

In my opinion, Fiber One 80 Calories cereal is not bad. The flavor is pretty good and it does not get soggy as fast as other cereals I have eaten. The 10 grams of fiber is quite a bit more than any other cereal I buy. If you are concerned about your fiber intake, this is a pretty good low-calorie choice. If you tend to get hungry in the middle of the morning, I would suggest eating more than the recommended serving size. If you prefer the taste of whole, unprocessed foods, this might not be a good choice for you.

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