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A lawsuit has been filed against a leading labeling company, General Mills, for misleading and false advertising for its Cheerios Protein cereal. The lawsuit was brought up by the Consumer Advocacy group Centre for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), the lawsuit accuses the company of adding a lot more sugar into its cereal and only a negligible amount of more protein than the regular cheerios. The regular cheerios have 7-grams of protein in each serving. However, the lawsuit says that 7-grams is not so much more than 3-grams found in the regular cheerios. The plaintiff also added that the "protein-enhanced" cereal has a larger serving size of 55 grams as compared to the 28-grams of the older one. Another point to catch the attention of the group was that cheerios had 17 grams of sugar in each serving which is way higher than the classic variant, says ABC News.

CSPI Litigation director, Maia Kats, said in an online statement, "Consumers who buy Cheerios Protein probably think they're doing themselves a favor, and that this more expensive product is essentially a protein-fortified version of original Cheerios. In fact, the main thing that distinguishes Cheerios Protein from original Cheerios is the huge amount of sugar and extra calories."

According to General Mills, they said that normally they do not pay heed to lawsuits from CSPI because their core intent is to seek publicity. However, in this case they will make an exemption. This is because the company believes that the issue may eventually come down to the federal regulations that determine the good protein and the serving size. General Mills seem to have a clear handle of their portion size and the subsequent protein quotient. But they still do not have an answer to the high sugar question, reports Munchies.