Posted on 03/30/2021 12:08:52 PM PDT by mylife
Chances are, it's never struck you as particularly odd that there's an entire supermarket aisle devoted to nothing but cereal. For most of us, cereal is the ultimate convenient breakfast, and even the most sugary of varieties claim to offer nutritional benefits and a balanced start to your day. Every brand is trying to convince you it's something different, something better, and there's probably at least one you're buying into. The "kids only" sugar bombs boast whole grains, and Special K comes studded with chocolate bits and sweet yogurt clusters.
But it wasn't always that way. Cereal's position as America's default breakfast food is a remarkable feat, not of flavor or culture, but of marketing and packaging design. It's a century-long history of advertising, a brilliant campaign that capitalized on the intersection of industrialization, health-consciousness, and changing class attitudes that completely upended the way Americans ate. And it all began at a moment when products were primed to transcend regional tastes through the rise of mass-marketing.
"America at the turn of the century was just as vast and varied as it is now," explains historic gastronomist Sarah Lohman. "Fannie Farmer's The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, from 1906, which I think is a decent judge of what the average, multi-generational, Midwestern or New England American family is eating or aspiring to eat, is showing a meal that includes: fruit; hot cereal like Quaker oats or hominy; a substantial meat like beefsteak, 'warmed over lamb,' or broiled halibut; potatoes, toast, or muffins; or, of course, coffee." In other words, a breakfast of just hominy or porridge was considered a nutritionally unbalanced poor family's breakfast—not exactly something you'd aspire to. Cereal changed all of that.
(Excerpt) Read more at seriouseats.com ...
I think the last time I ate cereal other than oatmeal was in a motel at one of those “continental breakfasts”
Nothin spells loving like mccrap that you pour 2% milk on right in the mcbox...
OK Who remembers cake topping (frosting?) made with Special K and brown sugar, then put under the broiler to crisp up? My mom would make that for spice cake topping, maybe others.
My version wasn’t quite as good as hers, but my daughter often requested it.
Where’s the Corn Flakes and Rice Crispies I grew up on???
“Considering what the cereal was made of, it was probably healthier for us to eat that prize!”
Agree, if people knew what carbs were doing to them, they’d never get near crap. But the food/medical community likes it the way it is, with obesity/diabetes being big-time ‘revenue engines’ (a little Rick Perry lingo).
Elite propaganda. They want to take cereal away from us. You watch— in 35 years, you’ll be eating gruel, own nothing, and like it. I’ll be dead, so I won’t care. Just let them take everything from you.
Cherrios with milk. Pretty darn good way to start my day!
I never eat cereal, but I will eat plain oatmeal (no sugar added). I sweeten plain yogurt and oatmeal with 0-calorie stevia or some fruit (fresh, not canned in syrup).
Keep kids from eating the sugar cereal. I think that is what causes ADD. I had Sugar pops and Capt Crunch and Fruit Loops etc as a kid. Looking back I think I was bouncing off walls.
The last time I had Cereal was 40 years ago, it was beer poured over cheerios.
Breakfast of champions. lol.
I thought it was Hamburgers.
When I was a kid I watched Saturday morning cartoons while I overdosed on Captain Crunch.... while mom and dad were making my sisters.
Now I’m diabetic and the Captain is complicit...Aunt Jemima too.
I believe I’ve been there.
Worst thing you can put in your body.
I dropped 5 lbs over 4 months just by stopped eating cereal for breakfast.
Now it’s eggs or plain oatmeal with bannana or apple on top.
Totally can’t do carbs in the morning, it makes me crash.
Same here. And you are hungry again two hours later.
Since I've been having three fried eggs each morning (in butter), not only am I not hungry the rest of the morning but I can even skip lunch.
To think they’ve made a cereal for decades now called ‘Cookie Crisps’. Why not just call it for what it is and dump the ‘Chips Ahoy’ in the milk?
My morning breakfast for decades...
Oatmeal w/cut-up strawberries
Banana
Skim milk
...and 3 cups of coffee - 2 before and 1 after
I find typical cereal simply repulsive.
The Capt and aunt jemima?!!!
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