You know how the donkey, Donkey, says that "everybody likes parfaits. Have you ever met a person, you say, 'Let's get some parfait,' they say, 'Hell no, I don't like no parfait'?" I feel that way about cereal. Really, everyone likes cereal. Almost all childhoods have cereal as a fairly strong staple somewhere in the breakfast culture, and thus people tend to be pretty passionate about their cereal and their cereal choices for so much of their lives.
Cereal seems to be a very personal experience for everyone. Thus, I find that almost everyone feels very attached to their own practices and preferences in regards to cereal. Lots of people will have a favorite cereal and need to tell you about it, "Have you tried Autumn Wheat? It's so good even though it only has 3 ingredients!" --Jason "in a band" Katzenstein, or people might have something that they really disagree with in regards to someone else's cereal choices, like "Yeah, I tried it. It was good but not amazing." --Paul "so meta right now" Silverman.
This stubbornness that people have surrounding their cereal culture seems to cause the most contention when it comes to the great schism between "sugar" cereals and "non-sugar" cereals. I like to think of this as the frosted mini-wheat debate. One half is sugar, the other half is oaty or wheaty. Really two labels ("sugar" and not "sugar") are not good labels for the two categories, seeing as almost all cereal has some sugar in it. Even Katzenstein's favorite, Kashi's Autumn Wheat, has "Organic Evaporated Cane Juice" (wtf is that? FANCY ASS SUGAR). What would better categories be?
Maybe:
Freakin' out Fructose (10g of sugar per serving and up)
Sometose Sucrose (6-9g of sugar)
Lacking Lactose (5g or less)
That separates the categories at
Cinnamon Toast Crunch(10g) and sweeter
Honey Nut Cheerios(9g) --> Life(6g)
Total(5g) and less sweet
I feel the need to make it known that I am in no way unbiased on this debate. I am definitely partial to the Sometoses. Strangely enough, I think I can pretty certainly remember the exact moment that put me into this category forever. I grew up thinking about sugar cereal in the same way that most dads feel about beard-approaching chin stubble--just for vacations. So my only exposure to sugar cereal was from those small boxes that come in 12-packs (and always seem to have pops. I know I dont GOTTA have 'em) when we went to visit my grandparents in Florida. Then once, my sister took me aside at the grocery store and showed me the nutrition facts on a box of life cereal, and made me feel so fucking rebellious when I saw that it had sugar in it. She said that as long as there's not a LOT of sugar, it's ok and our parents would probably let me get away with it.
From then on, I think I've been partial to the mids of the sugar cereal spectrum.
In this blog, I plan to explore all the different aspects of cereal that get people so worked up. For example:
Oh shit! Hot cereal?!? They can do that?
the fairly new trend of freeze dried fruit in cereal. Isn't fruit supposed to go bad?
Milkless cereal? "too dry" or "oh hi!"?
and so much more
Also, there will be cereal reviews. Probably with a rating out of 10. Some cereals, only if they're indie enough, might get "best new cereal."
Until then, keep it realeal.
