Friday, October 30, 2015

Unremarkable Until The Milk: Kashi Organic Promise Cinnamon Harvest Cereal Averages Out!


The Good: Good taste with milk, Good ingredients.
The Bad: Expensive, Not as nutritious as one might hope for from an organic cereal
The Basics: Kashi Organic Promise Cinnamon Harvest cereal is good when it is in the bowl, but on its own is less flavorful than it ought to be.


When it comes to cereal, I'm not a huge environmentalist. I don't need everything to be organic or gluten-free or anything like that. That allows me to enjoy and evaluate the cereals I review pretty objectively; I take them as they come. As a result, I was neither biased for or against the Kashi Organic Promise Cinnamon Harvest cereal I picked up a few weeks ago and have been eating since.

The Kashi Organic Promise is best with milk, has great ingredients, but is expensive and is not incredibly nutritious, so it factors out to be a pretty average cereal.

Basics

Kashi Organic Promise Cinnamon Harvest Cinnamon Harvest cereal is a flavored shredded wheat cereal. It seems to be attempting to compete in the same market as Frosted Mini-Wheats or offer those who are obsessed with organic cereal a little more variety in their diet.

The standard box of Cinnamon Harvest cereal is 16.3 oz. That represents approximately eight servings and my box made it to the full eight servings when I measured each one out to 28 pieces per serving. The actual Cinnamon Harvest cereal is comprised solely of 7/8” wide by 3/4” biscuits of shredded wheat. This is a "naked" shredded wheat cereal, but

Ease Of Preparation

Cinnamon Harvest cereal is a breakfast cereal, so this is one of the low-impact breakfast options as far as preparation goes! Simply open the box of Cinnamon Harvest cereal, count out twenty-five biscuits and put them in a bowl. I have discovered, as part of getting healthy, that one of the biggest challenges one might have with breakfast cereal is actually eating the serving size recommended by the manufacturer. Given that I have been monitoring my intake for a couple of months now, I am now able to enjoy a single serving of only 25 pieces of Cinnamon Harvest cereal in a sitting!

For the purposes of my reviews, and my regular consumption, I only use skim milk (fat free) milk when reviewing Cinnamon Harvest cereal.

Taste

Rather predictably, the Cinnamon Harvest cereal smells strongly of cinnamon and wheat. There is a grainy aroma to the cereal that dissipates enough to let the cinnamon scent escape, but the two aromas accurately and adequately foreshadow the flavor experience of the Cinnamon Harvest cereal.

On its own, the Cinnamon Harvest cereal is dry and wheaty. The flavor is dominated by the actual shredded wheat for the bulk of the flavor experience and it is not particularly flavorful, good, or enjoyable. But then the center hits and the consumer gets blasted with a sweet burst of cinnamon that finally overwhelms the grainy basic cereal one might believe they are stuck with.

With milk, the Cinnamon Harvest Cinnamon Harvest cereal changes flavor considerably. Every bite suddenly becomes flavorful and sweet. The sugary center and the cinnamon saturate the milk and then overcome the otherwise bland shredded wheat of the cereal. Milk allows the cereal to reach its full potential as it acts as a medium to carry the actual flavor of the cereal evenly and that is pretty good.

This cereal has a very dry aftertaste. With milk, the Cinnamon Harvest flavor has an entirely sweet flavor that lingers in the milk, but does not endure on the tongue after one is done eating it.

Nutrition

Kashi Organic Promise Cinnamon Harvest cereal is fairly nutritious on its own and with skim milk! Made primarily of organic whole grain wheat, organic dried cane syrup, and organic cinnamon, there is nothing unpronounceable in the Cinnamon Harvest cereal. There is not a separate list of nutrients, so this is a cereal without and sprayed-on vitamins and minerals, which is good in that the ingredients are simple and forthright.

A single serving of Kashi Organic Promise Cinnamon Harvest cereal is 55 grams, 28 biscuits. In that serving, there are 180 calories, with only ten of those calories coming from fat. There is no saturated fat in this cereal, nor cholesterol. With no sodium as well, one might think this shredded wheat could be devoid of any real nutrition, but it has 5 grams of dietary fiber, which is 24% of the RDA! With six grams of protein and 170 mg potassium, Cinnamon Harvest has more nutritional benefits than the average cereal. On its own, this cereal lacks significant quantities of any vitamins and minerals, which is a little disappointing for a Kashi Organic Promise cereal.

Storage/Cleanup

Cinnamon Harvest is a cereal, so as long as it is kept sealed in its box, it ought to remain fresh for quite some time. When one is done pouring the cereal from the box, fold down the plastic inner wrap to help maintain the cereal’s freshness.

Cleaning up after Cinnamon Harvest cereal is simple as well. Simply brush away crumbs left by it and you are done! It is that simple! This is a cereal that only slightly discolors the milk added to it, though, so if the milk gets on your clothing consult a fabric guide to clean it out. Still, it is not a cereal that is likely to stain clothes from its milk, outside things lighter than cinnamon.

Overall

Cinnamon Harvest cereal is expensive for its flavor, but is in no way terrible. It's just average and for the price, that's a harder sell than it ought to be.

For other cereals, please be sure to check out my reviews of:
Fiber One Protein Cranberry Almond Granola
Kellogg's Frosted Mini-Wheats Maple Brown Sugar
Kellogg's Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory Chocolatey Almond cereal

5/10

For other cereal reviews, please visit my Cereal Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the breakfast cereal reviews I have written!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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