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.
I really appreciate and respect the "spirit" of this blog post as I, too, am a huge fan of cereal, especially when it is realeal. However, it may be seen as culturally insensitive to suppose that "Almost all childhoods have cereal as a fairly strong staple..." Cereal is not a regular breakfast food in most parts of the world, although it is a crucial and inextricable part of the US culture of breakfast.
ReplyDeleteThat aside, I enjoyed this post and expect great things from future blog posts.
I appreciate that this post strives to transcend the sweet/bland binary in cereals, which we all know to be a socereal construct.
ReplyDeleteEthan, I agree with that, and thought about specifying that I was talking about American childhoods, but seeing as I don't plan on going international, I thought it a fine generalization to make
ReplyDeleteglad to see this man. actually i've thought of this exact same idea before, but you beat me to it. i love cereal and will deffinitiy read/contribute/eat anytime. as far as miniwheats while we're on the subject. have you tried Trader Joes Brown sugar Maple miniwheats? absolutley awesome with some chopped banana.
ReplyDeleteanother topic you might want to bring up is what kind of milk. i'm partial to sweet milk with my cereal. i used to eat raisin bran crunch with chocolate milk. i used to do very vanilla soy milk. but these days it's all about the Almond Breeze Vanilla milk. nutty and sweet, compliments any cereal
fascinating point. a truly delicious dichotomy i often take for granted. thanks paulie. also, as for best cereals to eat dry, I'm not sure if this counts but granola has the most satisfying crunch ever when it stands alone. that's all, blog much appreciated, this is an issue that actually affects us all daily. good day to you sir!
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