Is it possible for a cereal brand to have 125% more vitamin C than another cereal brand?

Yes, it is possible.

First, let’s say that Cereal X = 12 grams of vitamin C, and Cereal Y = 15 grams.*

Calculate percent difference like this:
(Y – X) / X * 100%
(15 – 12) / 12 * 100%
3 / 12 * 100%
25%

Now, let’s say that Cereal A = 12 grams and Cereal B = 27 grams.*

(B – A) / A * 100%
(27 – 12) / 12 * 100%
15 / 12 * 100%
125%

*that is a lot of vitamin C

You make more sense than my textbook! Thank you!

Sure, why not? Most cereals are fortified with vitamins. They add as much as they want, within reason.

Only until the cereal with the lower percent adds 5%, makes them out to be liars, and causes another expensive carton re-design, add campaign and/or costly reformulation.

Sure. Just spray more vitamins on it.

Sure, as noted above by @PhiNotPi. But why should that make the cereal better? It’s an idiotic marketing ploy. A good balanced diet including fresh vegetables, fruits, whole grains, nuts and proteins will generally provide you the vitamins you need. If you want to play it safe, add a good multivitamin. The idea of vitamins is getting a sufficient quantity to maintain good health, not trying to find how much it takes to overdose an any given one. When marketing schmucks pump foods like cereals and bread full of this or that vitamin, they are not concerned with your health. They are doing it because they think you’r gullible enough to believe you NEED cereal spiked with vitamin C, or whatever they are boasting about. Look for cereals that are whole grain, high in fiber, and aren’t mostly sugar. And note that sugar, fructose, high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, and honey are all essentially sugar. Some cereals try to disguise the fact they are more than 50% sugar by mixing and matching from all the available forms they can pack into it. Be forewarned that most factory food today is garbage designed to inflate corporate profits and consumer waistlines. Be particularly suspicious of cereals masquerading as vitamin pills.

@ETpro Some people do need it because they don’t eat enough fruits and veggies. Fortifying and enriching foods wasn’t the worst idea. I am all for a whole food, non-processed, low in animal protein, diet but failing that adding vtamins and minerals to cereal, salt, breads, and some other staple goods have made American children overall healthier, especially back when we couldn’t move goods around like we do now. I guess one could argue it has gone too far, because now we have so many processed foods, but some of the original fortifying of foods saved kids from scurvy, rickets, and adults from thyroid problems.

@JLeslie If you need a particular vitamin, the safe way to get it is to buy that vitamin and take it. Pumping vitamins into all kinds of foods as a marketing ploy is absolute insurance that the consumer, unless they are a computer scientists and track all the contents in everything they eat, has no idea what they are getting too much of and what they are still deficient in. Want vitamins? Take a multivitamin. Past that, you are just investing in expensive excrement.

@ETpro I don’t think we have to worry about getting too many vitamins from fortified food. As much as I agree with you about taking the vitamins and minerals we specifically need (I encourage people to get blood tests to narrow down where they might be deficient) the amounts in cereal and bread are fairly low. The USRDA recommendations are more like minimums from what I can tell and some of the nutrients absorb better with certain foods or on an empty stomach, so it doesn’t even always absorb well anyway.

I have yet to meet someone in America who has tested too high on vitamins or minerals just from eating food, even fortified and enriched food.

@JLeslie Check :this”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_poisoning.

I don’t see what that wikipedia page has to do with fortifying cereal. By the way your link didn’t work, but I looked up the page myself. The cases of overdose and death seem to me to be from supplements not fortifying and enriching food. Did I skim it too fast?

People are stupid, they don’t read, they just pop pills, including vitamins and minerals. My girlfriend, who is a pharm rep, was giving her young son her super duper vitamin pills for women. I had to tell her the iron in them was dangerous for children. You would think a pharm rep would know to read the warnings on a label of pills and to not give a child something made for adults without scrutinizing it. Hell, even adult men shouldn’t take it, unless they have anemia.

Back to things like cereal; a lot of children’s cereal only have about 25% of the daily requirement. A few cereals boast about 100%. Then there is everything inbetween of course.

Have you ever really looked at the IU’s, micrograms, and milligrams on packaged food? Then looked at the doses in supplements? The difference is vast. I think vitamin B12 is something like 6 mcg’s a day. Supplements are usually 500+. Vitamin D I don’t believe anyone is getting enough if they are protecting themselves from the sun, unless they are taking big supplements.

The only vitamin I worry about people, especially women, overdosing on is vitamin A. I’m not a doctor as you know, so what I worry about doesn’t necessarily carry weight, but all the other vitamins I think we don’t have to be concerned about regarding adding vitamins to staple foods.

The big question I guess is if fortifying food is actually necessary for the larger part of the population. It’s like the vaccine question, which is the greater good? If three people get OD’d from eating highly fortified food, but 100,000 will be dificient without it, what is your choice? I made up those numbers, it would be interesting to know how it really would pan out now that most people in the US have good access to a variety of foods. No matter what I think the goiter belt needs the iodine in salt; that one I have a hard time letting do of, and the vitamin D, now that I know how much I and many other people have to take to get our numbers in normal ranges.