Why do all cereals have the same number of calories per serving, regardless of what’s in them? I have scrutinized countless nutrition labels over the years and have yet to see a cereal that didn’t have 110 calories to the ounce. –Listener, Dick Whittington show, KIEV radio, Los Angeles
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Hold it right there, buddy. Not all cereals have 110 calories per one-ounce serving, as you’d know if you ever spent any time in a supermarket cereal section. (Believe me, it’s a sure cure for writer’s block.) Post Grape-Nuts, for one, has 100 calories (excluding milk), while Quaker Crunchy Bran has 90. Still, many cereals do have 110, ranging from Lucky Charms to Spoon Size Shredded Wheat. There are a couple reasons for this. The simplest is that Food and Drug Administration guidelines for nutrition labeling require that when you have more than 50 calories, you have to round off to the nearest 10 in order to make things easier on the consumer. Cheerios, for instance, really have 106 calories per ounce, but they get rounded to 110.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Slug Signorino.
