🥣 The Periodic Table of American Breakfast Cereals

The cereal aisle was never random. Every box has a number, a group, a place in the table.

Card 1 — The Full Table

28 cereals. 6 sugar tiers. One grid.

From Puffed Rice (nearly zero sugar) all the way up to Honey Smacks — which, per USDA measurements, contains more sugar per gram than a glazed donut — every cereal gets its atomic number, its two-letter symbol, its group color.

The layout follows real periodic-table logic: elements in the same column share a defining trait. Here, column = sugar tier. Simple.

Card 2 — The Sugar Spectrum

Six groups, plain English:

🟥 HYPERSWEET (>40g/100g) — the ones your parents rationed 🟧 VERY SWEET (30–39g) — technically "breakfast," legally candy 🟨 SWEET (20–29g) — the compromises 🟦 MODERATE (10–19g) — what the box calls "wholesome" 🟩 LOW (5–9g) — Grape-Nuts people, you know who you are ⬜ ZERO/TRACE (<5g) — Puffed Rice, eating regret at 7am

Sugar content measured per 100g dry weight, per USDA FoodData Central and brand nutrition panels.

Card 3 — Elements of Note

Four worth the footnote:

Honey Smacks (HS, element 9) — 56g sugar per 100g. The undisputed heavyweight of the table. More sugar than a Krispy Kreme. Still on shelves. Still mascot-ed by Dig'em Frog.

Grape-Nuts (GN, element 26) — 4g sugar, zero grapes, zero nuts. Named after the grape sugar (dextrose) in the 1897 original recipe. Dense, serious, polarizing.

Frosted Flakes (FK, element 7) — sold as "Sugar Frosted Flakes" until 1983, when Kellogg's quietly dropped "sugar" from the name. Tony the Tiger remained unbothered.

Special K (SK, element 20) — marketed as the diet cereal for 40+ years. Has more sugar than plain Corn Flakes. The most successful piece of nutritional misdirection in aisle 9.

Which group is your childhood cereal in? Drop the two-letter symbol in the comments. 👇

#breakfastcereals #periodictable #infographic #foodscience #nostalgiafood #datavisualization #americanfood #cerealnerd

🥣 The Periodic Table of American Breakfast Cereals

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