Turns out there may not actually be two scoops of raisins in a package of Kellogg’s Raisin Bran

[Guess they’re using smaller scoops now/Reddit/graeme3]

Kellogg’s, which advertises two scoops of raisins in our Raisin Bran, now has us raising an eyebrow and wondering just how big those scoops are.

After all, they never really promised us it would be two big scoops…

A picture posted to Reddit shows a really tiny scoop of raisins next to a really large bowl of bran after the uploader separated the two from the box.

And for cereal eaters who eat Raisin Bran specifically for the raisins (everyone, basically), the image is a rather unsettling one to see.

So what’s going on here?

In 2006 a writer for the Science Creative Quarterly named Greg Crowther gave a “quantitative analysis” on two scoops that Kellogg’s promises us, and has some answers for us.

Since Raisin Bran comes in either 15, 20 or 25.5 ounce boxes, he came up with two theories:

1. That “scoop size is independent of box size” and has the same amount of raisins regardless of the size of the box, or …

2. That “scoop size is proportional to the box size” and larger scoops are used for larger boxes and the opposite.

After counting the raisins in each box, Crowther found out that the 20 ounce box had the most raisins, making him throw out both theories since no box had the same amount of raisins and the middle sized box had the most.

So the author concluded that either “Kellogg employees are poorly trained in the operation of the scoops,” “Kellogg factories are equipped with a very large number of scoops of different sizes such that no two scoops are alike,” or “Kellogg allocates raisins via some stochastic process rather than scoops.”

But regardless of what’s really happening here, one thing was discovered: if you’re trying to get the best bran to raisin ratio, go for the 20 ounce box.