It seems like an opportunity to reinvent the form of "cold something to hydrate." Meusli's are still very high sugar (Alpen being the main example) and cereal in general is absolute garbage food.
There are some interesting attempts by a company called Holy Crap Cereals (holycrap.com), and they use ingredients like chia seeds (which expand in liquid) in their "skinny bitch," cereals. The branding attracted attention anyway. One of the ingredients in higher end muesli is whey, which is as pure a protein source as one can get.
Yes, though it's often considered a premium product. Given the exorbitant price per gram of "standard" prepared breakfast cereals, that might not be too much higher though.
Trader Joe's Muesli is quite good and reasonably priced. Ingredients are whole grain oats, sunflower seeds, raisins (raisins, sunflower oil), rice crisp (brown rice, caramelized pear juice concentrate, sunflower oil), pumpkin seeds, coconut, dried apples and sliced almonds.
It's $4/lb or about $0.25/oz, as compared with $0.30/oz for Kellogg's Corn Flakes ($5.29 @ 18 oz.).
Many stores will have a selection of "healthy" or whole-grain cereals, often smaller labels. Prices can vary considerably, especially at premium markets (e.g., Whole Foods or local specialty markets). Even general-product markets often carry these, though there are many granola-flavoured candies out there as well with sugar as one of the top ingredients, often 2nd place on the list.
The other option is to buy a mix of whole grains, nuts, fruit, etc., and mix your own.
The premium brands are often produced by the same companies in similar factories with similar ingredients. They just market them differently and…charge more. The same with generic store brands actually (same factory, lesser price). They are looking to capture as much profit and market share as possible.
Sounds reasonably priced, considering I see some boxes of breakfast cereal (basically reconstructed corn flour dust with sugar) at 4 or 5 dollars per box.
For US products, scale and agricultural policy (strongly preferring bulk grain, sugar, and processed-food production) has a large part to play. Another huge element is advertising, particularly children's advertising, of high-sugar cereals.
I'm wondering if part of the decline of the processed-cereal market isn't due to the general decline in television watching and cord-cutting.
Flipside is that similar advertising is likely to migrate to games and child-focused online video. If it hasn't already.
(I'm not part of the audience of either, nor would my extensive ad-blocking allow me to see what's being targeted to such content.)
