The Aldi Brand Cereal That Doesn't Win Any Points For Flavor

If you shop at Aldi, then you know that the grocery store chain carries a collection of cereals from a brand called Millville, all of which are variations of mainstream cereals, such as Cinnamon Toast Crunch or Lucky Charms. But there's one Millville cereal that you should probably avoid altogether.

Daily Meal ranked all of the Millville cereals and placed the Crispy Oats in the last spot. We found the Crispy Oats — which is the Aldi version of original Cheerios — to be extremely lacking in flavor. Specifically, we found them more similar to "a bowl of oatmeal [that has been] left [out] on the counter to dry out for a few days, and then pressed it into little O shapes," than to actual cereal. The only good thing about the Crispy Oats is that it's free of sugar — which won't matter if you can't make it through a bowl.

Reddit users who shop at Aldi are mostly in agreement with this ranking. One user posted about the cereal, writing about its "horrible" taste and "instant sogginess." They added, "Why is the cereal ALREADY soggy as soon as I put the milk in?!" Another user called them "awful" and vowed never to buy them again. One Aldi shopper even declared on Reddit that they have to make a "special stop for Cheerios" because they don't like Aldi's version. With all this in mind, it's no surprise that the Crispy Oats also ended up on our list of Aldi products to avoid.

Considering that Crispy Oats are supposed to be a Cheerios replacement, you may be wondering how the two differ. Firstly, the nutrition facts are quite similar between the two. A couple small differences are that Crispy Oats has 10 more calories than Cheerios (150 versus 140, respectively), while Cheerios has two grams of sugar (versus Crispy Oats' zero grams). With that in mind, maybe those two grams of sugar are doing a lot of heavy lifting in terms of taste.

The first ingredient in Cheerios is whole grain oats, while the first ingredient in Crispy Oats is whole grain oat flour. This is essentially the same thing, as oat flour is made from whole grain oats — although oat flour may have a slighter lower fiber content and a slightly higher calorie count. This reflects in the nutrition facts of the two cereals since we've already established that a serving of Crispy Oats has more calories, and a serving of Cheerios has one more gram of fiber than Crispy Oats.

All in all, it's hard to say why Crispy Oats don't taste as good as Cheerios (besides that small amount of sugar), but, regardless, if you like flavorful cereal it might be best to keep Crispy Oats off of your list of items to buy from Aldi. Instead, when you're at Aldi, grab a box of Honey Crunch 'n Oats with Almonds or the regular Honey Crunch 'n Oats — Aldi's version of Honey Bunches of Oats — which we named number one and number two, respectively, in our ranking of Millville cereals.