Business
Top 10 Breakfast Cereals America Wished They Had
Sometimes the best part of traveling is trying all the different food other cultures have. Although, it can be little things like a certain type of juice or cereal that you tried in Europe you will never find in North American that really set you back.
10. Lion Cereal From Europe and The Middle East
Lion Cereal is a crunchy, caramel, flaked Nestle product that is based on the bar version, Lion Bars, that features, you guessed it, a lion mascot. It is actually one of the many Nestle cereal products that feature a wild animal as a mascot but is one of the few that didn’t start out as a powder mix for drinks, although it is still based off of a previous product. The cereal is a crisp, caramel, chocolate flavour that is filled with sugar and carbs, perfect as your first meal of the day! The cereal was first introduced in the early 2000s but was unfortunatley discontinued for unknown reasons in 2003. It wasn’t until 2011 that the cereal came back to shelves in a new and slightly improved way. It’s only available across the European and Middle Eastern countries but it is imported into North America by third parties, so you could always hunt it down online. The cereal is relatively healthy to a point, it’s mainly a whole-grain flake shape that is both chocolate and caramel flavoured and boasts a high content of B12, B6, B2, and B1.
9. Milo Breakfast Cereal From Australia
Milo is an Australian “sport” cereal that boasts about giving your child tons of energy to kickstart their day, but in reality it’s basically just Nesquik and the energy comes from the insane amount of sugar in it, about 78 grams. As another Nestle product, it is incredibly delicious and will give you an early morning sugar rush, sadly it’s only available in a select country, this case being Australia, but if you really looked, you could probably find it in a specialty convenient store or grocery isle. It, like Nesquik, was inspired by its powder version that went into water (yes, water) or milk and turned it into a chocolate drink. The cereal isn’t all bad though as it does provide a sufficient amount of vitamins and nutrients like iron, B2, and B3. It is healthy enough that it would give you a decent amount of your required vitamins, but let’s face it the main thing here is that this cereal is delicious and sadly in the clutches of a 22hr flight to Australia.
8. Kosmostars Cereal From Russia
Kosmostars are a delicious bowl of cosmic sugary goodness that is dedicated to teaching you about space and is a little bit like Honey Nut Cheerios except the shape is different. Instead of little donut shapes, Kosmostars appropriately sports rocket and star shapes. Its mascot is an intergalactic bear named Captain Star, truly the original Star Lord, and the cereal itself is little whole grain pieces covered in honey. The cereal is regrettably exclusive to Russia, but can be exported to Spain or Portugal and it is currently the No. 1 brand in the nation, so rude of them not to share. Apparently they updated the cereal last year to include planet shapes and the back of the box features an educational illustration of all the planets and their names. This cereal is perfect for any underage, or of-age, astronaut living in your space station. In fact, the cereal is actually meant to inspire its fans to become more educated about space and it’s mission statement claims that the entire brand is dedicated to nurturing children’s curiosity of the stars and planets around them, perhaps the Russians bring a box to the ISS sometimes.
7. Miel Pops From France
Miel Pops is a French cereal that is basically what would happen if you smashed Honey Nut Cheerios and Corn Pops together. The cereal is made by Kellogg’s and even has a honey bee mascot named Pops, who replaced a different honey bee named Loopy, apparently it’s a very competitive business for bees, just shows you how luck the Honey Nut bee really is. The cereal was originally launched in the 1990s and used to be called ‘Honey Nut Loops’ but the nut was dropped from the ingredient list and therefore the title, and maybe even led to the replacement of the first bee, but hey that’s showbuzzness. Even the shape of the cereal is the same as Honey Nut Cheerios, the only difference is that Miel Pops, apparently, tastes way better. Honey Nut Cheerios has a high content of sugar and other sweeteners, while Miel Pops has a much higher honey content, which makes it naturally sweeter. This could be caused by European Union regulations on artificial sweeteners which causes food companies like Cadbury, Kelloggs, and others to change the recipe for different regions. It’s probably because of the more natural sweet flavour by the honey that make the French bee Queen of the Honey Cereals. Like many others it can be exported but you will probably have a hard time tracking it down in North America.
6. Nescau Breakfast Cereal From Brazil
Nescau is a crunchy, sugary, chocaltey Nestle cereal that is only available in Brazil. Unsurprisingly the cereal was inspired by a powder version of the same name, it turns out most of Nestle products are delicious chocolate powders turned cereals. The product launched in 1932 with the name being a cross between the Portuguese word for coco, Cacua, and the company name Nestle, pretty smart way to sell a product and it obviously worked as it is one of the most popular cereals in the country. Of course, like many of Nestle’s yummy breakfast products, the cereal was inspired by a powder mix version that turned milk into a chocolate treat. The product looks like Nesquik but is tastes way more like genuine chocolate, which is probably thanks to the fact that coco grows naturally in Brazil. The chocolate drink mix is still so popular in the country that it was even one of the primary sponsor’s of the Brazilian national soccer team for the World Cup. Brazil is the sixth largest cocoa exporter in the world, the reason the chocolate cereal probably tastes better could be because it is both naturally grown and doesn’t need to be shipped halfway across the world which reduces the need for certain preservation methods. Cocoa trees grow naturally in climates like that of Brazil and accounts for a large part of the their agriculture, this product could be considered a sort of national pride in terms of breakfast cereals.
5. Vitalis Cereal From Germany
Vitalis is a oat-like German cereal by Dr.Oetker that is truly delicious and one of the few on this list that is relatively healthy. The cereal is kind of like Oatmeal Crisp but better, think of it as the cereal your parents would give to you to trick you into eating healthy in the mornings or the one they told you was really gross so they could keep it all to themselves. It’s the kind of cereal that you would see someone eating next to a window sill on a rainy day in the commercial, or eating out of the box on the couch in real life. It consists of almonds, oat flakes, and pops with delicious whole milk chocolate pieces in it that could honestly come straight from the Hershey factory. The 14 grams of sugar it contains comes mostly from the almonds and chocolate and is balanced out by the 11 grams of protein, and 13 grams of fibre, which is a good change of pace considering many chocolate cereals get their sugar content from just adding sugar and sweeteners. Vitalis is one of those cereals that should have a commercial where nobody shares it because it’s that good, you feel like you are eating a bowl of chocolate bars with some crunch but your are also being really healthy about it so no guilt. Sadly the only place to get it outside of Germany is Austria so if you ever go there, maybe bring back a few boxes.
4. Chocapic Cereal From Europe and Latin America
Another chocolate breakfast treat from Nestle, Chocapic is what happens when you make Frosted Flakes completely out of whole grain and chocolate and it sort of looks like Milo cereal, also owned by Nestle. The cereal was first introduced in 1984 and is fronted by a chocolate-loving dog for a mascot, which is kind of ironic and probably dangerous for actual dogs since chocolate is lethal to them so please don’t give them any of this cereal. Even though it is insanely sugary it is sort of healthy, it does boast calcium and Vitamin D as well as Iron and Fibre, but it probably isn’t the best source for these things. The cereal itself is suppose to be in the shape of flower petals which may be strange but has a solid reason behind it, basically it is shaped like that because the ‘origin’ of the cereal is a giant balloon that burst over a field, releasing the chocolate petals all over it and becoming the biggest farmed food in the world. Seriously, no other farmers even stood a chance, either farm the chocolate petals or head to the city. The cereal is famous for being very genuine in its chocolate taste and ranks as one of the most popular cereals out there, the real kicker is that pretty much everyone outside of North America is able to enjoy it, so that kind of sucks.
3. Kariot Cereal From Israel
Now Kariot is truly an iconic breakfast cereal, it is the type of cereal you would be begging your mom to by at the grocery store, it’s also a unique product as it was the first to have chocolate in the middle. It is an incredibly delicious and unhealthy nougat creme filled cereal that is loaded with sugar and chocolate and will have you bouncing off the walls before you finish brushing your teeth. You might notice that they look exactly like Krave cereal pieces but that is because the minds behind Krave were actually inspired by this cereal. Kariot was launched by a company called Telma in 1994 in Israel and became the very first chocolate filled cereal in history, truly groundbreaking. The name is even Hebrew for pillows, which are the shape the cereal pieces resemble. The centre is filled with a delicious hazelnut chocolate that would give you a sugar rush to last you until dinner time. The product is exclusive to Israel and the only way you can get it on the outside is if you order it online from a place like Amazon. There are no artificial preservatives or anything like that in the cereal though, so it might taste a little stale by the time it arrives, better to just take a trip to Israel and enjoy it, or they could just share it.
2. Strawberry Pops Cereal From South Africa
Strawberry Pops are a Kelloggs cereal that are only available in South Africa, which is really unfortunate because these little strawberry suckers are absolutely delicious and a nice alternative to the mainstream chocolate cereals. They are essentially a strawberry flavoured version of the American Rice Krispy cereal, and instead of three little bakers there is a cool seal as the mascot, he even wears a baseball hat backwards and honestly looks like he is loving his strawberry life. The cereal is about as healthy as chocolate rice krispies and are just, if not more depending on your preference, as delicious as it’s American counterpart. If you were a kid in South Africa, you would most likely be going grocery shopping with your mom every single time and begging them endlessly to let you have this every day, it’s one of those cereals that taste so good and make you so hyper you are actually excited to get out of bed on a Monday morning just to go eat a bowl, unless your older sibling didn’t eat the entire box by hand. Instead of chocolate milk, you get strawberry milk, which is arguably better, and yes there is a powder version of this that came first, isn’t there always?
1. Golden Nuggets Breakfast Cereal From The United Kingdom
Golden Nuggets is kind of like Corn Pops and Captain Crunch mixed into one with its whole aesthetic being based off of American gold diggers the polar opposite of Britain, who at that time typically mined coal. It is made from cereal grain, sugar and honey which gives it a very sweet honey flavour, again because it is exclusive to the United Kingdom it goes by European Union artificial flavour standards. This basically means that the cereal has a more genuine flavour of honey than it would if it was an American cereal because it uses real honey for the sweet taste instead of artificial sweeteners which are banned from European foods. The cereal was originally introduced in the late 1970s and was sold all over the UK, Ireland and even the United States to start, however the product was later pulled completely much to the displeasure of it fans. It wasn’t until 1999 when the little golden sugar balls were brought back to the grocery shelves of the Untied Kingdom, mostly because all the kids who wolfed it down in the morning had grown up and had children of their own, so really it was nostalgia that saved the cereal. Ironically, the cereal’s mascot is an American gold digger and his mule named Klondike Pete and Pardner respectively, the slogan even features the American “yee-haa” slang and the character sports a southern American accent, but the actual cereal never returned to American breakfast bowls and isn’t sold anywhere on the North American continent, kind of seems a little unfair.