Confession: I Bought Cereal

Long time readers of this little place here might remember that I posted, way, way back when I first started this blog in 2011, that I don't buy cereal.  I don't buy it because for years I have made granola and that is what we eat instead.  

Why granola and not cereal?  Well, granola I can control the ingredients of.  It's pretty simple, no long multi-syllable words that take some major brain power to figure out how to pronounce. No preservatives to mess with DS2's asthma and eczema, either. It is also cheaper to make granola than to buy a box of cereal.  Especially when you have four growing kids who can make a big box of cereal disappear in one sitting.

Today I discovered two more reasons why I will keep making granola and eschewing cereal.

Reason #1:  Cereal, even the "healthy" multi-grain kind, is too sweet for my palate any more.  This is the stuff I used to eat back in the 1990's that tasted bland compared to the sugary cereals marketed to kids.

Reason #2:  Even a larger than serving-size bowl (according to the serving size listed on the box) left me feeling less than sated.  An hour and a half later found me digging into a small bowl of granola because I was still hungry.

I'm pretty much bashing all cereal here, not the particular brand I ate this morning, so I won't give the name of the cereal or the company that makes it.  I just won't ever give in to mommy guilt again when my daughters say "Mom, why don't you ever buy us cereal?"

Because that is how this particular box of cereal came to be in my house and on my table this morning for breakfast; my 15yo looked at me with big sad eyes in the grocery store and said "I haven't eaten cereal at home since I was in Kindergarten, only at other people's houses."  (She starts her Junior year of high school next month) "Mom, why don't you ever buy us cereal?"

So, I caved, but only slightly.  I bought a box of supposedly healthy cereal versus a box of highly colored shapes drenched in sweeteners and chemicals.

But you know what?  That 'healthy' cereal hit my tongue this morning and my first impression was "eww, too sweet!".  I read the list of ingredients again, even though I'd skimmed through it at the store before even putting the box in my shopping cart.  Whole grain #1, Whole grain #2, Sugar, Whole grain #3, Whole grain #4, Whole grain #5, Corn Starch, Brown Sugar Syrup. . . the list went on for about six more ingredients including one listed vaguely as "Color Added".  "Color Added"?  What the heck is that?!?  The cereal is beige.  What color was added?

But I digress.  Back to the issue of being too sweet. . .

Hmm.  Now, the labeling law requires that ingredients be listed by quantity, the largest amount ingredient first and smallest amount last.  Which means that sugar is a larger percentage of this cereal than Whole Grains Number 3, 4, and 5 are.  At the very least, sugar is equal to those and the equal amount ingredients are listed in random order.  But, given that this is supposedly a healthy cereal I'm thinking the marketing department would not have listed sugar ahead of a healthier ingredient (like Whole Grain #3 for instance, or #4, or #5) if they were of the same quantity in the recipe.

And then after those three whole grains, brown sugar syrup--more sugar!  In my granola recipe, brown sugar and honey are the sweeteners and they are only more plentiful than the water and the vanilla in the recipe.  All the seeds (sesame and sunflower) and the coconut is equal in quantity to both the honey and the brown sugar.  The nuts are double the amount, and the oats are 12x the amount!

Yeah, I'm sticking with my granola.

When I had finished that bowl of cereal (much too quickly according to my stomach which was saying "hey, wait a minute, that was a pretty chintzy breakfast!"), I was left with about 1/2 a bowl of milk.  Huh, what?  When I eat my granola and get to the end of the granola, I'm also at the end of the milk.  It just kind of magically absorbs as I eat, not making the granola dissolve into mush, but not being left behind in the bowl either.  Not wanting to waste the milk (especially because it was raw milk I had gotten my hands on in a roundabout way, shhhhhh), I drank it straight from the bowl.

Ewwww!!!  Sugary milk!  Ugh!  My awesome contraband milk was tainted with sweeteners!  Also something that never happens when I eat granola instead of cereal.

Yeah, I'm definitely sticking with my granola!