Let's take a look at how the site collects your info and generates your custom cereals. I'm going into detail because I think they've done a great job, and more sites should be this easy. The site starts out by asking you to create a profile for someone in your family including their age, gender, and food allergies. This was great because I got to check off that I won't eat wheat or dairy, and I don't often get the chance to choose no wheat... as in can any of you name an airline that gives you a no wheat no dairy meal choice? I wish! You can choose if you want your cereal in bowls or pouches, and what size the servings are. I chose "medium: 1 to 1.5 cups," and ended up with nearly 2 cup servings. Fine here!
The next page is where the fun and specifics happen. You are asked, using checkboxes, to check off pretty much EVERYTHING you like from six categories:
- Cereal Flakes including bran flakes, oatmeal flakes, corn flakes, cocoa corn flakes, frosted soy flakes.
- Cereal Puffs and Rings including oat rings (cheerios), rice puffs (krispies), cinnamon corn stars, fruit flavoured corn puffs, sweetened oat and soy rings
- Other Cereal Forms including multi-bran squares, wheat biscuits (shredded wheat), granola, cinnamon graham squares
- Fruits (mostly freeze dried) including peach, blueberry, strawberry, raspberry, mango, raisins, toasted coconut
- Nuts including pecans, sugar coated sliced almonds, honey roasted soy nuts, almond coated raisins
- Clusters/Add-Ins including banana nut clusters, chocolate marshmallow bits, dinosaur shaped rice puffs, and maple nut clusters.
This site certainly rules when it comes to giving you options for varied flavours and diets. In fact, each of the above has an icon you can link that describes the item and has a picture. How else would I know that "rice puffs" are what we commonly call "krispies." I also like how you get the feeling they are including absolutely everything they have right now. You can envision someone taking the current General Mills cereals and breaking them down so that they can be customised... like I can have Golden Grahams mixed with Cocoa Puffs, Muesli, and Trix (but will I live to tell!).
The site then asks about health issues you may have, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, constipation, osteoporosis, and so on. Why? To try to match you up with nutrients found in some of their products, and they list which nutrients match each concern. If I say I need more fiber, their cereal generator will try to match me up with lots of fiber. This is a great feature that allows people to be specific without having to judge for themselves which products may not be right for their health issues.
