Do you have a favorite cereal? I don’t have cereal often but when I do it’s usually because I have a random weird craving to have it for dinner like my mom used to let me do occasionally; perhaps it’s a craving for that familiarity of a fond childhood memory. Either way, I know one thing about cereal: their nutrition facts are all over the place (maybe that’s just all processed and packaged American food? That’s for another blog post entirely). Anyways.
I Zeroed in on Fiber and Potassium
I found this dataset of 80 cereals, cleaned it up, and I took a look at it to see if there were any significant comparable numbers and trends. I looked at each aspect of the nutrition label including sugar, fiber, sodium, fat, calories, and vitamins, but what I found was that a strong positive correlation exists between fiber and potassium, indicating that cereals high in fiber are also likely to be high in potassium! I went further as to see which manufacturers cereals average the highest fiber and potassium content, and I found that it was Nabisco! Those are the people that make Oreo’s and Nilla Wafers (who knew they also made cereal? Not me). This was compared to Quaker Oats, Post, Kelloggs, and General Mills (I took out the American Home Food Products data).
The blue bars in my chart represent fiber content. I know my chart is sad (at best), but if you look closely (yikes), in the Nabisco section, you can actually see the blue bars compared to in the other manufacturer sections where it barely exists.
An Infographic?
I actually switched around what I was going to do at least four times. I had no idea how I was going to go about it and ultimately, a long vertical infographic popped into my head and it made sense to me. Now, I wrote the text first before editing the layout of the infographic and I fear it sounds very sales-y, commerciall-y, market-y, but that’s just what I’m used to! I tried, OKAY! I like to think of it as ~informative~. I figured there are a lot of people who don’t like to be told about what’s in the food they’re eating (trust me, I would know), and this is a playful, calm way to go about it. That’s another reason I just chose to identify and report on a trend rather than identify a trend and then use my media portion to be like, “Cereal has so much sugar! It’s gonna give you diabetes!” You know?
Canva A.K.A. my Bae
Canva is actually the love of my life and she executed my vision for this infographic perfectly. Included my chart, visuals of cereal bowls and other supporting icons, an icon with the correlation of the potassium and fiber link, and the Nabisco logo. I broke up the text into small, digestible chunks, getting straight to the point with each, but also making fun, engaging titles to grab attention (you have to be fun when the topic is cereal). I used Canva on my Chromebook!
Attribution
All of the icons are from within the Canva platform with the exception of the Nabisco logo which I got from a simple Google search and of course the chart I made on Microsoft Excel. Canva has so many cute icons. Don’t play with her! All of my nutrition based facts and tips are from the CDC.
In Another Life
In another life where I actually like looking at numbers and I desire to get better at making charts and stuff of the sort in Excel, I would have added a scatter plot highlighting the higher numbers in Nabisco cereals. I also would have made a chart where it just shows the average fiber and potassium content of each manufacturer instead of the content for multiple cereals, that way it’d be less cluttered. I think the use of small little bowl and spoon icons on a chart or scatter plot would be cute and simple too.
Now go, and eat thy cereal!
