One of my first obstacles in dealing with the real world is overcoming breakfast. The surprisingly
important first meal requires great patience, balance, and preparation to ensure a quality start to the day. However, knowing that my food skills are way under par, I decided to stick to the basics and undertake cereal.
Premeditation:This seemingly simple meal requires only two major ingredients: cereal and milk (each with its share of intricacies). To choose a milk ingredient you must deal with two dimensions to come to a decision: quantity and type. Determining the quantity of milk you need is dependent upon the number of people in your household drinking milk and their respective appetites for milk: such that you can maximize the amount of milk ingested before the milk goes bad, and minimize the number of trips to the grocery store. Some people drink a glass a day, some fill their bowls to the top, some until the cereal floats, and some need a
gallon. The type of milk is not as complicated (although some may disagree, i.e.
Lewis Black) and is specific to your own taste; more health conscious people prefer less fat, while more taste conscious people prefer whole. Living alone, and an above average milk drinker, I decided to buy a half gallon of reduced fat milk.
Now that milk was out of the way, the last step was to choose the cereal. Cereal as it turns out, can be sugar filled or sugarless, comes in all sizes and shapes and textures, not to mention that you can combine multiple cereals in one bowl; this leads to the great
variety in cereal. After years of eating Cocoa Puffs, Lucky Charms, and OreoO's I decided to try a healthier cereal for my new "adult" lifestyle. I chose Raisin Bran due to its healthy mix of fruit and fiber.
Acquisition:Having planned the meal, I headed to the grocery store to buy the ingredients. Getting the milk was easy enough, but then came the cereal aisle. Peering through the myriad of logos, I spotted the box, went to grab it when I leapt back in shock of the price: $5.95, for a single box! Cereal was no longer the commodity I once thought (In fact, the cereal business is quite profitably concentrated, look at the
stats). Slightly upset and confused, I gazed around for alternatives including honey bunches of oats, special K, and the rest, until...alas the super market's own brand of Raisin Bran appeared, and on sale, 2 for the price of $5! As some of you may already know, super markets sometimes sell generic versions of popular cereals at lower prices and less appealing packaging, but what some of you may not already know, is that these generic versions are exactly the same as the "real" versions, just look at the identical descriptions in this ABC news
article. Feeling quite clever and a filled with a new sense of consumer confidence, I hastily purchased the cereal and headed home.
The Meal:The next morning I awoke and groggily awaited the pleasure of eating a good bowl of cereal. After pouring milk until the cereal floated (I admit I am a "floater"), I started to spoonful the meal. Getting through the first set of bran flakes I could not taste any raisins. I proceeded to spoon a better sample of the cereal, but was quickly disappointed, no raisins either. I jumped out of my chair checked the box and upon closer examination, could not find any raisins!
I had been duped, tricked by my own frugality. The cleverness had not been my own, but of the super market's cereal marketers that deceptively portrayed a box with raisin-like additions to convince the likes of myself. I defeatedly continued my breakfast, filling my mouth with spoon after spoon of bran, whose bland flavor and mushy texture overwhelmed my tastebuds to the brink of blandness that would not go away until dinner. I had to live with my mistaken purchase for the following 2 weeks until the two boxes I had bought were gone and ended up buying fruit to embed in the cereal for the sake of my mouth.
Lessons:The important lessons I learned through all of this is that even simple meals can be complicated. Never underestimate the subversive power of marketing, as it will lead you to buy things you don't need or necessarily want. But what I learned most of all is that if you are trying a new type of cereal or breakfast, give it a practice run the night before, so it does not ruin your day.
Post Analysis:Following this incident, the super market released a more distinguishing version of the "raisin bran" generic box that more closely resembled its actual contents. If only I was so lucky...
I'd be interested to hear of any other cereal bloopers that have been encountered
