I bought a box of Kellogg's Crunchy Nut Clusters after being advised to eat a more sugary breakfast. Coming from an overweight and dieting (but winning!) diabetic this sounds a bizarre statement, but I visited a nutritional specialist recently who took detailed accounts of my medical history and also required me to fill in a daily food diary for two months. Her advice was that my general diet is good; my diabetes is extremely well controlled (for someone who admittedly likes more cake than her blood sugar levels can tolerate) and my original symptoms of being tired and generally lacking energy could be improved by small changes in my diet.

The upshot of this was that I should spread through the day the amount of sugar I have; no sugar all day long, followed by a tinned in-syrup fruit and ice cream pudding is no good. The trick, for me, is to substitute my plain and largely sugar free breakfast for a sugary cereal and cut out my late night sweet cravings. This is easier said than done, but that is another story.

I decided on Crunchy Nut Clusters as I reasoned the sweetness would come from the honey, as opposed to plain old 'too much sugar'. A 45g serving provides 13% of an adult's daily recommended amount of sugar, and surprisingly there is 7g of fat in the cereal which is rather higher than I imagined for a breakfast cereal.

I have eaten them a few times now, and honestly I think the best thing I can say about the cereal is that it keeps well. I do like the original Crunchy Nut Cornflakes and although this is based on the same idea, for me it doesn't quite work.

I find the flavour of them cloying sweet, far too sweet to eat in the morning and very 'strange' too. The cereal is made up of multi-grain cereal with peanut and honey clusters; the problem is you have two completely different textures of cereal in your dish! It's mainly crunchy individual grains and they're nice enough on their own, I actually think it's the clusters which let the cereal down - they're extremely odd.

Some clusters are huge, you can see from the square edges that they've been cut in their thousands by machine and these are the ones which haven't separated properly. Then you have smaller, more manageable clusters - these are delicious and if only Kellogg's had used just these small ones the cereal would be far nicer overall.

The taste of honey is very strong in these Crunchy Nut Clusters, far more apparent than in the original flakes. This does become overpowering very quickly, I adore honey but combined with the sugar within this cereal it starts getting sickly. I have noticed I automatically pour out a very small bowl of this cereal; whereas I can munch my way through a large piled up bowl of Rice Crispies or Shredded Wheat, I know Crunchy Nut Clusters are really for someone with a bigger appetite than myself.

On a positive note, the amount of peanuts is perfect and they add a delightful flavour to the cereal. I sometimes long for more peanuts as if you are lucky enough to get a cluster which is packed with the little beauties then it doesn't taste so amazingly sweet - in short, the peanuts definitely do a good job in breaking up the sugary flavours!

I also like the fact that the cereal doesn't soak up too much milk and become soggy, the clusters retain their crunch and while the grains lose some of their crunchiness they still have a very nice texture. The milk tastes absolutely delicious after eating the cereal, taking on a delicate flavour of Crunchy Nut Cornflakes (the original ones, not this savagely sweet by-product). I have actually been known to drink the milk from the bowl as though it were a cup, too impatient to lift the spoon a dozen times.

Despite my personal misgivings regarding this cereal, I do (surprisingly) recommend it. To certain types of people. If you favour a bland breakfast like myself I'm sure this will completely overpower you, and perhaps put you off food for the remainder of the day. My favourite breakfast is Weetabix - no sugar, a splash of milk and maybe a few strawberries if I'm feeling very exotic. To me, eating Crunchy Nut Clusters is on a par with a custard doughnut for breakfast.

However, I am well aware that the very things I dislike about this cereal are just the ingredients to draw in the younger market. I'm sure there are more people who like Crunchy Nut Clusters than dislike them, my granddaughter is fourteen and she informs me she has been eating them for quite a long time. Although even at her sugar loving age she cannot face the sweetness in the morning and eats hers for supper, or she did until she had a healthy eating session in school and the whole Crunchy Nut franchise was labelled as one of the most sugar laden breakfast cereals eaten regularly in their age bracket.

It's certainly not what I would class as a healthy breakfast, but in fairness it doesn't claim to be.