When you think of a complete and balanced breakfast as an American, you cannot help but think of certain foods. You would think of eggs, sausage, bacon, pancakes, waffles, orange juice, milk, and of course, cereal. And if you grew up in the last forty years, chances are you've eaten cereal with a cartoon mascot on it. Cereal is a gimmicky breakfast food aimed mainly at youth and for the American on the go. As a culture, we love cereal so much that we devote an entire aisle to it in any grocery store you go to. We may love our cereal, but is it healthy enough to make it our most important meal of the day?
Breakfast Cereal is an invention of the 19th century. The full history of cereal can be read here. It has proven itself to be consistently popular since its inception. Many big companies like Kellog's, General Mills, Post, and Quaker Oats have all built cereal empires. The vast majority of them also feature unique cartoon characters for each and every cereal. This makes them seem even more original and lovable. Since the target audience is obviously children, toys often come in the box too. This makes the child associate even more positive things with cereal then for the rest of their lives. This helps to ensure that they stay happy, loyal cereal eaters. It just so happens that the same companies that made the cereals you grew up with also offer you more "sophisticated", adult cereals. Here is a very complete list of cereals.
This should reflect in a huge way on our culture. It says that we do not need to eat something fresh or organic if we choose not to. If we choose not to, we have plenty of options. It says that food mass produced in a plant and made of many different unnatural ingredients is suitable for breakfast. Also, we don't necessarily have our health as much in mind as we do our tastebuds. Here are the nutrition facts for Raisin Bran. Even the cereals we consider healthy are not health foods by any stretch of the imagination.
If we are exposing entire generations of children to sugary meals that are more like snacks, then how do we expect these kids to ever choose a yam over an oreo? It is a well known fact that the U.S. is the fattest country in the world. It comes as no surprise then that breakfast cereal is an American phenomenon. While the food itself is not intrinsically bad, over indulgence in it can be. If we had less cereal choices, maybe it would not seem like 10% of the food in the world, or at least the grocery store, is cereal. Cereals can be fun and cereals can be less than healthy, but all in all THEY'RE GREAT!!!
4 comments:
I like your relationship of this sugar loaded breakfast cereal to our current society which is as unhealthy and choosey as it is anything else. I personally think that some of the more healthy cereals are very tasty so I think that by using better ingredients we could still produce visual and taste appealing snacks that are much healthier. With our world seeming to get ever faster paced I don't think that a homemade breakfast like the old days will become a more popular thing. All in all great analysis of this artifact, maybe you could have said what you think the future of cereal looks like.
Kyle, that was a great object idea! I really liked how in depth you went into the history and detail of the cereal. Cereal in itself is huge and deciding to write about is pretty neat. It was very interesting and fun to read. Good job!
That was an awesome post. It was well-rounded and really spoke to what the object said about our culture. I loved the topic too, since cereal has become such a routine object in our lives, it's easy to forgot that it has meaning to it. I would have liked to read what you think of how the breakfast industry, including cereal manufacturers, is moving to a more healthy image and product. It would serve as a good counterargument to your statement that we don't care what we eat. Great job though!
I like how you pointed out that cereal companies use toys and cartoon characters to target children. I would have liked to have seen your links more integrated into the text, rather than just saying, "Here is ___" and putting a link to it.
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