On Freeze-Dried Strawberries

How often do we see someone really pave a new path in the cereal world? For the most part, I would say that it's just variations on the same. This time it's rice. This time it's corn. This time it's rice on one side, corn on the other (but really, how does Crispix do it?) This time it tastes like apples (or doesn't. Apple jacks--possibly the biggest ploy of cereal advertising). So, honestly, I was really nervous about the idea of putting fruit directly into the cereal box when special K first created special K with strawberries. I know it's actually called special K with "red berries" but red berries could be so many things. Rasp, boysen, strawb. The term red berry seems so much more broad than it has to be.

1. How could they really make a fruit last in a cardboard box traveling around the country all the way from Battle Creek, Michigan (the factory of special K) to WesShop, CT? They must have to do something really unnatural to fresh strawberries to make them not real food or something.
2. Would it taste like a fresh, real strawberry once it eventually makes it to my bowl or would it just be a milky damp dried strawberry?

Obviously, I'm a big proponent of fruit in cereal. I think a bowl of cereal is almost always improved by some chopped up bananas or strawberries, or some sprinkled in blueberries. I even went through a phase where I would put frozen chocolate chips into my Life cereal. That was a weird time in my life.

Perishables just never seemed like they had a place inside the box. Until this, I think it was exclusively grains, nuts, and sometimes chocoalte...and marshmellows...and chocolate chip cookies. I guess if they can make cereal out of chocolate chip cooooooookies [crisp], they should be able to figure out how to put strawberries in cereal. And really, how far of a stretch is it from raisins to dried strawberries? Why should the way that a fruit is dried (either sun or freeze) totally change the way it's perceived. So, I had a change of heart. Maybe this freeze dried strawberry craze is something to look into.

Apparently, I was not the only one to subscribe to the freeze-dried revolution. Special K with "red berries" (SKwRB) was here to stay. I got the inside scoop from a woman at Usdan (Wesleyan dining hall) who apparently said that SKwRB goes about 5 times as fast as any other cereal. In addition to hungry Wesleyan students, other cereal companies seem really interested in the power of switching strawberries from DIY to prepackaged. Honey Bunches of Oats (HBOO) also has recently come out with a HBOO with strawberries. However, it seems like HBOO, a cereal that I thought could do no wrong, only managed to get the name of the berry (at least they don't call them "red berries" or sliced berries or "good berries" or something else nondescript like that) right with this new creation. The cereal doesn't support the berry in the same way that special K does. It just seems like a strange, forced pairing (kind of like Wesleyan and football. HUZZAH) unlike the way that SKwRB feels much more natural. Furthermore, the strawberries are inferior to "red berries" of Special K. They basically validated all the fears that I had for freeze-dried fruit. They don't really have any bite, or any of the taste of fresh strawberries. I would compare them more to thin crisps of styrofoam with the strawberry taste of a jolly rancher as opposed to anything natural.

I guess the prepackaged fruit craze, as with any revolution, needs to be done right. Don't just go freeze-drying fruit left and right. Think twice, do it right, keep it realeal.

The Frosted Mini-Wheats Bipolarity

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.