Are you Special enough? (Kellogg's Special K)

Member Name: jo@145

Product:	Kellogg's Special K
Date:	19/06/05 (970 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Low in fat, has added vitamins

Disadvantages: Not cheap

Special K doesn’t loose it’s crunchiness as quickly as Cornflakes, so it’s become one of my favourite Breakfast cereals, even though it is more expensive. I was really pleased to see the following great offer in Tesco when I was shopping on Thursday.

*OFFER*

Any 2 packets for £3.00 including Special K, Special K with Berries , Special K with Peach and Apricot( all 375g) and Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes(750g).

*****

I was tempted and decided to try the one with Peach and Apricot as I often cut a Peach up and put on my cereal in the summer and a huge packet of Crunchy Nut Cornflakes. Normally £2.39 a packet it is quite expensive, and when I came home I did some sums - with the help of my trusty calculator as it was getting late and my brain was tired!

Portion size on packet is a 30g serving, so that means there are 12.5 servings in a packet. Each portion costs 19.11p plus your milk. So really I felt that wasn’t too expensive, but 30g is NOT a big bowl full, as I discovered the next day. But on offer it becomes a great bargain, because one packet only costs £1.50 or 12p a portion!

*WHY DID IT CATCH MY EYE?*

As with all Kellogg’s products it has the large red K on the front of the packet, it is mainly a peachy colour and shows about 5 flakes and 2 pieces of fruit with a splash of milk leaping out of the waist of a pair of jeans and emblazoned across it on a tape measure in large red and green letters it says “TRY OUR KICK START AND SEE IF YOU CAN” “DROP A JEANS SIZE”, “in 2 WEEKS.” Also on the front is a label saying “99% fat free.
So into my shopping trolley it went, I could do with losing a bit from around my middle!

*KICKSTART*

I do remember the cereal idea of losing weight a few years ago, and all the details about this are on the back of the box. You only do this for 2 weeks, literally a Kickstart to get you going.
Tests had been carried out by Loughborough University using overweight volunteers. They ate a bowl of Kellogg’s cereals like Crunchy Nut cornflakes or Special K for breakfast and again for lunch or dinner for 2 weeks with a normal well balanced 3rd. meal each day Over 75% of the group reduced their waist and hip size and 38% could wear a smaller jean size!

To measure your BMI – Body Mass Index and for more information
www. kelloggs.co.uk/kickstart

*PACKET INFORMATION*

As with all Kellogg’s cereals they have so much information about sensible eating, and do have a list of ingredients, which you will have to look at for yourself as we don’t do this on Ciao. But the dried fruit entry says Peach, Apricot, and Sugar 6%. It is a good source of vitamins and compared with Cornflakes there is less calories per 100g, more protein and more vitamins. So it’s up to you what you prefer and what you want to pay for. The information is all there for you to decide.

*BREAKFAST*

I opened the packet, very easily and the plastic sealed packet inside opened easily too, sometimes I find it difficult and they split and then it’s not easy to seal it up. As always there is a lot of space in the box. I pulled out the packet and could see the pieces of fruit, and was pleased to see there weren’t inches of dusty broken cereal in the bottom; I do hate finishing off a packet and getting a bowl of sawdust!

It smells just like most cereal but there was perhaps a hint of fruit. I tipped it into my bowl and then decided to weigh it, so had to tip some back for my 30g portion! As always I started nibbling before I went to the fridge for the milk. The Special K was lovely and crispy and tasted of wheat and rice. The slices of peaches were about 3cm long and 1cm wide and surprised me. I was expecting some chewy cardboard tasty fruit, but no it was like biting into a type of crisp, which then dissolved leaving a tingly peachy flavour. The apricot pieces were smaller and cut into pieces 1cm x 2cm and again they were crisp to bite into and then dissolved, there flavour wasn’t quite as pronounced.
The milk on and still some cereal left in the bowl, I dived in with my spoon. The flakes were still crunchy but the fruit had absorbed some milk and reconstituted, just like it should be and again was easy to eat. Perhaps the answer is the freeze drying, it made it much better than other fruits I have had in cereals.

For a different flavour try Special K with purple berries. This has blackcurrants, blackberries and blueberries, and is a lovely way to start the day.

Sadly the bowl was soon empty, time to put it in the dishwasher, only my coffee left to drink. Could I last until lunch time with only a coffee at 11.00am? What do you think ……..?

Summary: