elfs | Bear Naked Opportunism

Bear Naked is a brand of granola that has recently been making a push in our neighborhood. Two big billboards, and suddenly the stuff is appearing on the shelves in every grocery store in the city. I've had it, and found it good enough granola but hardly remarkable. The billboard is catchy, though.

Since cereals were on the shopping list, I took a look at Bear Naked and its competitors. And I was struck, as I was looking at the nutrition information, that Bear Naked was so much better in the sugars and other "fast" carbohydrates than any of their competitors. I mean, startlingly better.

I took a closer look and realized that Bear Naked said "Serving size: 1/4 cup," whereas every other cereal has "Serving size: 1/2 cup." I mean, who eats a quarter up of cereal in the morning? A half cup isn't terribly much.

Scaling up the serving sizes so they were all the same, the generic "organic" store brand, "Back to Nature" actually came out on top. Better price, less sugar-- excuse me, "evaporated cane juice"-- about the same amout of protein. Slightly less fiber, but the price/performance was overall excellent compared to the others.

Obviously, the assumption here is that even people who look at the nutrition facts block will forget to check the serving size, assuming that every cereal uses the same serving size. But to be so blatant about it as to make the bullshit alarms go off was just stupid of 'em.