Review: Kashi GoLean Peanut Butter Crunch Cereal

Kashi GoLean Peanut Butter Crunch Cereal Review Box

I hope with a name like “Peanut Butter Crunch,” that Kashi’s newest GoLean cereal is at least made with crunchy peanut butter.

The creamy vs. crunchy debate has been waged for decades, with proponents of each texture so ardently supporting their preferred legume paste that I’d bet America’s political system was modeled after our competitive two-PB-party system. I mean, this civil war is so divisively volatile that the opposing sides can only agree on one thing: that the unspoken third party, chewy peanut butter*, is so abhorrent that it had to be wiped from the marketplace sometime after 19-dickety-two.

*Google may tell you chewy peanut butter isn’t a real thing, but that’s just what the Illumi-nutty want you to think.

I personally grew up sheltered: my parents only bought creamy. But after experimenting with crunchy in college, I’ve come out a changed man: one who loves his butter flecked with crisped chunks of roasted goodness. Perhaps it’s my destiny to make peace between the two PB camps, and I’m meant to start by reviewing this Kashi Peanut Butter Crunch cereal, which blends the flavor of creamy PB with crunchy bits.

No matter what, I won’t let anyone silence me. Well, except for the peanut butter that’ll inevitably gum my mouth shut.

Kashi GoLean Peanut Butter Crunch Cereal Review

Kashi GoLean Peanut Butter Crunch is not a very good dry cereal, plain and simple. It’s airy and crispy mix of puffed grains, sparsely populated with occasional clusters big enough that the pioneers could ride them for miles, definitely has a Nutter Buttery aroma, but its flavor profile is polar opposite from that cookie’s own recent cereal.

Instead of being hyper sugary, Kashi’s take on breakfastifying George Washington Carver’s pride and joy tastes mostly just like peanuts themselves. Roasted, lightly oiled, and slightly savory (thanks to the wholesome, but forgettably non-descript toasted grain base), this peanut infusion is undeniably pleasant, but I prefer that my peanut butter cereal’s actually taste like butter, instead of pad thai.

Don’t even get me started on how hard it’d be to eat this cereal with chopsticks.

Kashi GoLean Peanut Butter Crunch Cereal Review with Milk

Instead, Kashi Peanut Butter Crunch is a rare example of a cereal that borderline requires milk to be enjoyable. Like mixing up Nesquik, milk’s creaminess plus the cereal’s strong peanuttiness produces a happily natural PB whole. Coupled with the woodsiness of the base and the roasted quality of the nut taste, there’s even a faint smoky quality to it that brings back flashbacks of all the chestnuts I never actually roasted over an open fire because I don’t think anyone actually has.

While the texture is still a bit of a concern, the cereal really bulks up in milk: the clusters and loose grain greedily sucks up moisture, and the whole crackling deal ends up feeling like some sort of Organic Peanut Butter Rice Krispies mixed with edible gravel. And while that sounds more like a cereal I’d dream about and then wake up massaging my molars, it totally works here (assuming you have milk to take the mineral edge off, of course).

Cap’n Crunch’s Peanut Butter Crunch, this is not: Kashi GoLean Peanut Butter Crunch lacks mouthwatering butteriness, but it sure doesn’t taste like butts. Instead, it’s what I’d expect from Kashi: a hyperrealistic take on a common sugary cereal flavor that’s layered with roasted, rugged, and hopefully healthy nuance, but only when you add milk to multiply its complexity—Gremlins style.


 

The Bowl: Kashi GoLean Peanut Butter Crunch

The Breakdown: Nutty, roasty and toasty, this cereal is more P than B. But don’t let that stop you from adding milk and enjoying a bowl of crisply earthen legume delight.

The Bottom Line: 7 forbidden chewy peanut butter artifacts out of 10

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