For many cereals (corn flakes, for example), the nutrition label lists 1 cup, which weighs something like 28 grams (about 1 ounce). One of General Mills’ new Curves cereals, Whole Grain Crunch, has a serving size of 3/4 cup, or 27 grams. It’s a little denser than corn flakes, so a serving is less than a cup.
But the even-denser Honey Crunch has a serving size of 1 cup and 53 grams.
Why would you eat a bigger bowl of a denser cereal? Here’s the Food and Drug Administration’s peculiar process for determining cereal serving sizes: The serving size in standard cup measurements must be the one that holds an amount of cereal closest to one of the Reference Amounts Customarily Consumed per eating occasion (RACC). The FDA has three standard RACCs for cereal: 15 grams, 30 grams and 55 grams.
The weight stated on the label must be the weight of the cereal actually contained in that nearest fractional-cup measure. So General Mills has somebody weigh a cup of the cereal and pick the closest RACC. Then they take that RACC weight of cereal and see how many cups it really fills, then they take the nearest standard cup size and weigh that amount of cereal.
