The Most Popular Cereals Ranked From Worst To First

It was once estimated that the average American eats approximately 160 bowls of cereal each year. To say cereal is popular in the United States would be a massive understatement. When headed to the table for breakfast, many of us reflexively reach for a box of cereal.

Globally, the breakfast cereal industry is worth about $35 billion. By 2025, it's expected to be worth more than $54 billion. However, despite the growing popularity, the cereals that have been around for decades are still the most popular. In fact, the majority of the most popular cereals in the country have been around for decades.

With dozens and dozens of cereals at your fingertips when you visit your local grocery store, it can sometimes be an overwhelming choice. We'll help you decide by and ranking the most popular breakfast cereals, starting with the worst and ultimately reaching the best of the bunch.

If you want to start your day off on the wrong foot, start it with a bowl of Special K for breakfast. Even those people who eat this cereal on a daily basis (like Queen Elizabeth) don't do it for the taste, they do it for the supposed health benefits. However, an expert over at WebMD clearly states there's "nothing special" regarding the healthiness of Special K. It contains no fiber, a minimal amount of protein, and not enough vitamins for you to torture yourself by choking this down for breakfast morning after morning.

Special K is basically a combination of rice and wheat that goes limp and loses its texture soon after you pour the milk. The moment it loses its crunchiness, the bland taste makes this stuff almost inedible. Many people add fruit to their bowl in order to allow themselves to swallow their spoonfuls of Special K but, again, this cereal isn't healthy enough to justify going through that trouble.

If you must eat this cereal, do yourself a favor and go with a variety that adds fruit to the mix like Special K Raspberry or other tasty ingredients like Special K Cinnamon Brown Sugar Crunch. A better idea is to just give up Special K for good and don't look back.

While Fruity Pebbles tastes pretty good, they have a few fatal flaws that stop them from rising higher on this list. The main flaw is that they get soggy faster than any other popular cereal. Unless you inhale this stuff in a few spoonfuls, you're bound to suffer through a period of sogginess as you eat your breakfast.

Another flaw is that there are just too many flavors at work. While each color in your bowl of Fruity Pebbles has a unique flavor, it's virtually impossible to enjoy any particular flavor — especially when the clock is ticking on your cereal being soggy. If you hesitate too long, you'll be left with mush in your bowl.

While this cereal has used the popularity of The Flintstones since the beginning to endear itself to youngsters for decades, it's high time to upgrade your breakfast if you're still eating this stuff.

While Cap'n Crunch cereal dates back to 1963, it's been passed in popularity by Cap'n Crunch's Crunch Berries — and for good reason. Crunch Berries has all the yumminess of the original Cap'n Crunch but with fruity and equally as crunchy pieces added to the party. Unlike Fruity Pebbles, you can actually taste individual flavors in this cereal.

The only drawback with Cap'n Crunch's Crunch Berries is that it's a cereal that you will get bored of after a while. It's so sweet that there are only so many bowls of this stuff you can eat before you want to move onto something else. In fact, they made an Oops! All Berries version that just had the berries part and none of the golden pillows and it didn't last — presumably due to an overload of sweetness. Even if you have an overactive sweet tooth, eventually this cereal will have it waving a white flag.

With or without milk, Froot Loops cereal is a joy to eat. It's sweet but not overbearingly sweet. The texture provides the perfect amount of crunch and then it gently melts in your mouth. The fruity flavors are fantastic. The colors, which include orange, lime green, red, orange, and purple, are vibrant and visually pleasing.

There's one thing, though, that might make you never look at a bowl of Froot Loops the same way. While your brain may tell you each color has its own unique flavor, that's apparently not the case. It turns out that each and every loop tastes the same — from the orange that you may believe tastes like orange juice to the purple that you may believe is grape flavored. I guess Toucan Sam, the cereal's mascot since 1963, and the gang tried to warn us by purposely misspelling the word "fruit."

Despite that disappointment, it's still going to be difficult to pass up a bowl of Froot Loops. Your brain will still tell you the loops taste different — and you might as well roll with that because the truth is too difficult to live with.

A bowl of Raisin Bran can either be absolutely outstanding or exceedingly mediocre depending on one thing: the number of raisins that make the journey to your bowl. Unfortunately, whether or not you will be blessed by the right amount of raisins relies completely on luck. There's nothing you can do; shaking the box to mix things up doesn't help.

Raisin Bran consists of bran flakes and perfectly sweetened raisins. While the bran flakes aren't too fun to eat alone, the addition of the right amount of raisins can make a spoonful memorable. When the ratio is right, there's no better way to eat a cereal that is high in fiber.

If you want to improve your odds, you may want to opt for Raisin Bran Crunch. This version adds clusters of granola to the mix that have been blessed with honey. Thus, if your bowl doesn't end up with the optimal amount of raisins, the granola can pick up some of the slack.

If you are the type of person who enjoys complex foods with a variety of different tastes and textures at work at the same time, Honey Bunches of Oats is the cereal you should go to each morning. This cereal took three years to develop but it was well worth the wait. A mix of whole grain wheat, corn, rolled oats, rice, and barley flour form the base of the cereal. It's then sweetened with honey and molasses. While it sounds complicated, it all blends together so perfect it's difficult to think back to a time when this cereal didn't exist.

What's also cool is there are over a dozen varieties of Honey Bunches of Oats, which allows you to pinpoint what exactly your taste buds will enjoy the most. The Honey Roasted version is the original, but many of the others are well worth your hard-earned money, including the Apple Caramel Crunch and the Pecan and Maple Brown Sugar.

For many people, the list of their favorite breakfast cereals begins and ends with Cinnamon Toast Crunch. That stance is extremely difficult to argue against. If you have a sturdy sweet tooth and you can stand a generous amount of cinnamon, this cereal really could be the best possible thing you could eat for breakfast — even though it's not exactly good for you.

While Cinnamon Toast Crunch can be criticized for getting soggy quickly in milk, it's not that big of an issue because it still tastes really good even when it's soggy. Plus, whenever you finish eating the cereal, you will have a bowl of milk that will taste amazingly good. No other cereal on the planet leaves behind such tasty milk. In fact, Cinnamilk was created to replicate the taste of a bowl of milk after the Cinnamon Toast Crunch is all gone.

The inventors intended for this cereal to taste like cinnamon toast. While they didn't accomplish that goal, this cereal is still a definite win.

Cereal simply can't get better than Honey Nut Cheerios. The fiber-rich whole grain oats makes this a filling cereal; one bowl will keep you full until lunch time. The nutty flavor of almonds gives Honey Nut Cheerios a richness that other competitors lack. To add a cherry on top, the honey adds the right amount of sweetness to draw you in and it causes each spoonful to be pleasurable.

While the original Cheerios were invented nearly 80 years ago, Honey Nut Cheerios arrived on the scene in 1979. If you've been eating this cereal most of your life, you might be surprised to learn that there was a major change to the recipe back in 2006. That's when ground almonds were taken out of the cereal and replaced by almond flavoring. Luckily, it didn't seem to negatively impact the flavor at all.

If it's your last day on Earth and you're down to your final breakfast choice, reach for Honey Nut Cheerios. It will not disappoint you.