Sugar Content in Popular Cereals: 2026 Rankings

Added sugar is one of the most useful numbers on a cereal box, and it varies more than almost anything else in the aisle. This ranking sorts 18 widely sold cereals by the added sugar in one labeled serving, from highest to lowest. Every figure comes from a current manufacturer page, a retailer listing or a USDA FoodData Central record checked on November 1, 2026, and the serving size is shown with each one because servings differ from box to box.

Understanding Sugar on Cereal Labels

The Nutrition Facts label was updated in 2016, and the FDA required manufacturers with $10 million or more in annual food sales to switch to it by January 1, 2020, with smaller companies following by January 1, 2021. One of the biggest changes was a new line for added sugars, shown in grams and as a percent of the Daily Value.

Total Sugars counts all sugars in a serving, including those naturally present in ingredients such as fruit and milk.
Includes Added Sugars counts sugars put in during processing, plus sugars from syrups, honey and concentrated juices. The word “includes” means these grams are already part of the total.

The added-sugar line is the one the main guidelines are written around. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025–2030, say no amount of added sugar is recommended and that one meal should contain no more than 10 g. The American Heart Association suggests no more than about 25 g a day for most women, 36 g for most men and 25 g for children ages 2 to 18. The FDA’s Daily Value is 50 g a day. A cereal with 12 g of added sugar per serving is already past the per-meal cap and uses about half of a child’s daily limit before anything else is eaten. For more on these limits, see Sugar in Cereal: How Much Is Too Much?, and for the rest of the label, our cereal nutrition guide.

The Rankings

Highest Added Sugar (12 g or More per Serving)

Cereal	Serving on the label	Total sugars	Added sugars
Kellogg’s Honey Smacks (16.3 oz box)	1 cup	19 g	19 g
Post Oreo Puffs	1½ cups (39 g)	16 g	16 g
Cinnamon Toast Crunch	1 cup (41 g)	12 g	12 g
Cocoa Puffs	1 cup (36 g)	12 g	12 g
Cookie Crisp	1 cup (36 g)	12 g	12 g
Kellogg’s Froot Loops	1⅓ cups	12 g	12 g
Honey Nut Cheerios	1 cup (37 g)	12 g	12 g
Lucky Charms	1 cup (36 g)	12 g	12 g

Honey Smacks stands well apart. Its 19 g per cup is 38% of the Daily Value, and its ingredient list opens with whole grain wheat followed by sugar, invert sugar and honey. On Post’s own website, the Oreo brand page now features Oreo Puffs rather than the Oreo O’s many shoppers remember; the Puffs list 16 g of added sugar per 1½ cups.

The other six cereals in this tier all list exactly 12 g, or 24% of the Daily Value. The Food Lion listing for Froot Loops checked for this ranking still showed Red 40, Yellow 5, Blue 1 and Yellow 6 in the ingredients, while Lucky Charms now lists colors from vegetable and fruit juice, carmine, spirulina extract, turmeric and paprika. WK Kellogg Co says all of its cereals will be made without artificial colors by the end of 2026; for the details, see our report on artificial dyes leaving the cereal aisle. A change of colors is not a change in sugar, so check the label on new boxes too.

Moderate Added Sugar (5 to 11 g per Serving)

Cereal	Serving on the label	Total sugars	Added sugars
Kellogg’s Raisin Bran	1 cup (59 g)	17 g	9 g
Honey Bunches of Oats Honey Roasted	1 cup (41 g)	9 g	8 g
Barbara’s Puffins Original	1 cup	6 g	6 g

Raisin bran is often described as getting most of its sweetness from fruit. Kellogg’s label tells a more mixed story: of the 17 g of total sugars in a 1-cup serving, 9 g are added and the rest occur naturally, chiefly in the raisins. That is lower than the 12 g cereals in added sugar, but it is not a low-sugar cereal.

Low Added Sugar (1 to 4 g per Serving)

Cereal	Serving on the label	Total sugars	Added sugars
Kix	1½ cups (40 g)	4 g	4 g
Three Wishes Honey	35 g	3 g	not stated on the brand page
Original Cheerios	1½ cups (39 g)	2 g	1 g
Cascadian Farm Organic Purely O’s	1½ cups	1 g	less than 1 g

Three Wishes says its Honey flavor is sweetened with organic cane sugar and monk fruit extract rather than honey, and lists 3 g of sugar and 8 g of protein per 35 g serving. Kix and Original Cheerios show that a mainstream supermarket cereal can be low in added sugar.

No Added Sugar

Cereal	Serving on the label	Total sugars
Grape-Nuts	½ cup (58 g)	5 g
Post Shredded Wheat Original Spoon Size	1⅓ cups (60 g)	0 g
Catalina Crunch Dark Chocolate	½ cup (36 g)	0 g
Three Wishes Unsweetened	35 g	0 g

Grape-Nuts lists 5 g of total sugars but none added, so its sugar comes from the grain ingredients themselves. Post Shredded Wheat lists no sugar at all.

What the Rankings Show

Twelve grams is a common number. Six of the eight cereals in the top tier list exactly 12 g of added sugar per serving. Every one of the eight is above the Dietary Guidelines’ 10 g per-meal cap on its own.

Serving sizes differ, so compare by weight too. A cereal can look lower in sugar simply because its serving is smaller or lighter. Dividing sugar by the serving weight gives a fairer comparison. Oreo Puffs work out to about 41% added sugar by weight (16 g in 39 g), Lucky Charms about 33% (12 g in 36 g), Cinnamon Toast Crunch about 29% (12 g in 41 g) and Original Cheerios about 3% (1 g in 39 g).

“Zero sugar” does not always mean unsweetened. Grape-Nuts and Shredded Wheat contain no sweetener. Catalina Crunch reaches 0 g of sugar by using stevia and monk fruit extracts instead, and Three Wishes Honey combines cane sugar with monk fruit. The Dietary Guidelines say no amount of non-nutritive sweeteners is recommended either and advise limiting foods with low-calorie non-nutritive sweeteners, so read the ingredient list as well as the sugar line.

The added-sugar line beats the total-sugar line. Grape-Nuts has more total sugar than Original Cheerios, yet none of it is added. Raisin bran has more total sugar than Lucky Charms, yet less added sugar. Judging cereals by total sugar alone would rank both pairs the wrong way round.

How to Use These Rankings

For an everyday cereal, start with the no-added-sugar and low tiers. This site uses 6 g of added sugar or less per serving as its everyday standard, which leaves room under the 10 g per-meal cap for fruit, milk or a little honey. Our healthy cereals guide applies that standard along with fiber and protein.

Higher-sugar cereals are better treated as occasional choices than daily defaults, especially for children, whose limits are lower.

Mixing is simple arithmetic. A bowl that is three-quarters of a serving of Original Cheerios and one-quarter of a serving of Cinnamon Toast Crunch contains about 4 g of added sugar (0.75 g plus 3 g), compared with 12 g for a full serving of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. The same approach can help when moving kids to lower-sugar cereals.

Check the box you buy. Recipes and labels change, sometimes with little notice, and box sizes of the same cereal can carry different labels.

Key Takeaways

Among the 18 cereals checked, added sugar per serving ranged from 0 g to 19 g, with Honey Smacks the highest.
Six popular cereals, including Honey Nut Cheerios, Lucky Charms and Froot Loops, list exactly 12 g, above the federal 10 g per-meal cap.
Kellogg’s Raisin Bran lists 9 g of added sugar out of 17 g total, so it is a middle-tier cereal, not a low-sugar one.
Grape-Nuts, Post Shredded Wheat, Catalina Crunch and Three Wishes Unsweetened list no added sugar, although Catalina Crunch uses non-nutritive sweeteners.
Compare cereals by added sugar and by serving weight, not by total sugar alone.

Next Steps

Find lower-sugar picks in Best Healthy Cereals 2026
Learn what every label number means in our Cereal Nutrition Guide
See how cereal compares with alternatives in Cereal vs Oatmeal vs Granola
Build a complete low-sugar morning with our Healthy Breakfast Checklist
Find more answers in our Cereal FAQ

Sugar values come from the manufacturer pages, retailer listings and USDA FoodData Central records listed below, checked on November 1, 2026. Formulations change, so verify current values on the package.

Sources

U.S. Food and Drug Administration: Changes to the Nutrition Facts Label — accessed November 1, 2026
U.S. Food and Drug Administration: Added Sugars on the Nutrition Facts Label — accessed November 1, 2026
Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025–2030 (PDF), USDA and HHS — accessed November 1, 2026
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, The Nutrition Source: Added Sugar (AHA limits) — accessed November 1, 2026
Vos MB et al. Added Sugars and Cardiovascular Disease Risk in Children: A Scientific Statement From the American Heart Association. Circulation, 2017 (PubMed)
Food Lion: Kellogg’s Honey Smacks, 16.3 oz — accessed November 1, 2026
Food Lion: Froot Loops, 23 oz — accessed November 1, 2026
Post Consumer Brands: Oreo Puffs Cereal — accessed November 1, 2026
Post Consumer Brands: Honey Bunches of Oats Honey Roasted — accessed November 1, 2026
Post Consumer Brands: Grape-Nuts Cereal — accessed November 1, 2026
Post Consumer Brands: Shredded Wheat Original Spoon Size — accessed November 1, 2026
Cheerios: Original Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios — accessed November 1, 2026
USDA FoodData Central, Branded Foods (Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Cocoa Puffs, Cookie Crisp, Lucky Charms and Kix, labels dated 2026; Kellogg’s Raisin Bran) — accessed November 1, 2026
Giant Food Stores: Barbara’s Puffins Original, 10 oz — accessed November 1, 2026
Cascadian Farm: Organic Purely O’s — accessed November 1, 2026
Three Wishes: Honey and Unsweetened — accessed November 1, 2026
Catalina Crunch: Dark Chocolate Cereal — accessed November 1, 2026