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I saw this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiEAV91DymI, yesterday. It's a YouTube video from "Today I Found Out" on the subject of Grape-Nuts cereal. The narrator for the series is Simon Whistler, who has a fine voice, is entertaining, tries to be informative and has air of distinction, but perhaps is lacking in education (seems to have trouble pronouncing anything beyond not just English, but specifically British English) and in experience. This video for example goes along pretty well until he blunders into a statement perfectly understandable from experience with other cereals about people having a big bowl full of Grape-Nuts instead of the recommended amount. Obviously I can't speak for everyone, but I think eating close to the recommended amount is about all most people could stand.
Grape-Nuts used to only come in a very small box compared to virtually every other ready-to-eat cereal. As Whistler makes clear in the video the stuff is dense, not just startlingly dense in calories, but dense in the sense of pure matter. The box could be small because most of us with experience eating it, would never try eating so much as a half bowl full of the stuff more than once.
Physics tells us the three states of matter are solid, liquid and gas. The three states of breakfast cereal as most of us know are dry, damp and soggy.
It is next to impossible to eat dry Grape-Nuts. It's too hard on your teeth and jaws. Damp with milk, I personally don't mind it. Soggy, it's disgusting in the bowl and hits your stomach like a lead weight. So you only ate enough that would stay damp and not go soggy.
Like a number of the cereals I grew up with Grape-Nuts was first produced in the late 19th century, when the fad belief was that bland foods cooled passions including passions for our fellow people, which in the Victorian ages was thought to be a good thing. Corn Flakes and several other cereals were invented to help keep people on the moral straight and narrow, no matter how ridiculous that may sound now.
Plain corn flakes were in fact the most popular cereal when I was a kid. I preferred Cheerios which at least were from the World War Two era. Post Toasties was somewhat superior in my view to the vastly more popular Kellogg's Corn Flakes. Only as a teenager did I learn that the secret of eating corn flakes was to gobble them down as fast as possible. Post Toasties, I think were a tiny bit more milk resistant. The Kellogg's version seemed to go almost instantly from dry to soggy.
I disliked virtually every ready-to-eat cereal once it was soggy. There were, of course, cereals that were not ready-to-eat and they were always serves soggy. We had several kinds of what the British would call porridge. There was and still is oatmeal which I happen to like and even sometimes like to snack on dry. Yeah, dry it gets kind of pasty in the mouth, but I like it. I only like the "old-fashioned" oatmeal. The plain instant is tasteless and disappointing, which no doubt is why you can get it in so many flavors. The "old-fashioned" cooks just as fast in the microwave as the instant and tastes much better. You do have to make sure to stir it before eating, because oatmeal in its rare damp stage is not good! I never had Malt-o-Meal. I suspect my family tried it and rejected before I was born. However, we did have on occasion, Farina, Hot Ralston, Cream-o-Wheat and Cream-o-Rice. I don't know what all Hot Ralston had in it, but it did include noticeable chaff and it tasted off. Farina was not quite as bad, no obvious chaff, but it did have a strong taste that my brother, sister and I did not like. My brother hated Cream-o-Rice unless my mother put raisins in it. I preferred Cream-o-Wheat, but was okay with Cream-o-Rice, both of which (as well as oatmeal) were improved dramatically with raisins!
There were some cereals that it seemed only old folks ate, seemingly because old folks in those days had universal problems with irregularity. Bran Flakes and All Bran were pretty nasty tasting, All Bran, being known by most young people back when as sticks and twigs. Raisins again came to the rescue and made Raisin Bran palatable for most of us.
My memory isn't perfect and I had the impression that All-Stars cereal was another bran cereal, in fact it was Kellogg's attempt to make Cheerios, that didn't come along until 1960. Going back to genuine older breakfast cereal... I think my brother liked Wheaties, I didn't. Do they make Kix anymore? They used to be quite popular. They've long since been overshadowed by the heavily flavored versions, like Trix and Cocoa Puffs which did not exist when I was very little. I liked Quaker Puffed Wheat. (Sugar Crisp aka. Golden Crisp/Honey Crisp/ et al was one of the few sweetened cereals our mother would get for us sometimes.) Similar Quaker Puffed Rice was disappointing in that it was mostly tasteless and got soggy very quickly. Puffed rice as in Rice Krispies is a very different thing, which can be found in many different cultures. I wouldn't turn up my nose at Rice Krispies when I was little, but I mostly liked them for a change, not a daily breakfast food.
When the 1960s rolled around, supermarkets had run most old-fashioned non-self-service grocery stores out of business. With lots more shelf space in stores, companies were looking at kids more and more as cash cows, and began to produce many more flavored cereals, and bizarrely some parents began to think of mini-marshmallows as 'a part of a nutritious breakfast.' Just as glad mine didn't.
Grape-Nuts used to only come in a very small box compared to virtually every other ready-to-eat cereal. As Whistler makes clear in the video the stuff is dense, not just startlingly dense in calories, but dense in the sense of pure matter. The box could be small because most of us with experience eating it, would never try eating so much as a half bowl full of the stuff more than once.
Physics tells us the three states of matter are solid, liquid and gas. The three states of breakfast cereal as most of us know are dry, damp and soggy.
It is next to impossible to eat dry Grape-Nuts. It's too hard on your teeth and jaws. Damp with milk, I personally don't mind it. Soggy, it's disgusting in the bowl and hits your stomach like a lead weight. So you only ate enough that would stay damp and not go soggy.
Like a number of the cereals I grew up with Grape-Nuts was first produced in the late 19th century, when the fad belief was that bland foods cooled passions including passions for our fellow people, which in the Victorian ages was thought to be a good thing. Corn Flakes and several other cereals were invented to help keep people on the moral straight and narrow, no matter how ridiculous that may sound now.
Plain corn flakes were in fact the most popular cereal when I was a kid. I preferred Cheerios which at least were from the World War Two era. Post Toasties was somewhat superior in my view to the vastly more popular Kellogg's Corn Flakes. Only as a teenager did I learn that the secret of eating corn flakes was to gobble them down as fast as possible. Post Toasties, I think were a tiny bit more milk resistant. The Kellogg's version seemed to go almost instantly from dry to soggy.
I disliked virtually every ready-to-eat cereal once it was soggy. There were, of course, cereals that were not ready-to-eat and they were always serves soggy. We had several kinds of what the British would call porridge. There was and still is oatmeal which I happen to like and even sometimes like to snack on dry. Yeah, dry it gets kind of pasty in the mouth, but I like it. I only like the "old-fashioned" oatmeal. The plain instant is tasteless and disappointing, which no doubt is why you can get it in so many flavors. The "old-fashioned" cooks just as fast in the microwave as the instant and tastes much better. You do have to make sure to stir it before eating, because oatmeal in its rare damp stage is not good! I never had Malt-o-Meal. I suspect my family tried it and rejected before I was born. However, we did have on occasion, Farina, Hot Ralston, Cream-o-Wheat and Cream-o-Rice. I don't know what all Hot Ralston had in it, but it did include noticeable chaff and it tasted off. Farina was not quite as bad, no obvious chaff, but it did have a strong taste that my brother, sister and I did not like. My brother hated Cream-o-Rice unless my mother put raisins in it. I preferred Cream-o-Wheat, but was okay with Cream-o-Rice, both of which (as well as oatmeal) were improved dramatically with raisins!
There were some cereals that it seemed only old folks ate, seemingly because old folks in those days had universal problems with irregularity. Bran Flakes and All Bran were pretty nasty tasting, All Bran, being known by most young people back when as sticks and twigs. Raisins again came to the rescue and made Raisin Bran palatable for most of us.
My memory isn't perfect and I had the impression that All-Stars cereal was another bran cereal, in fact it was Kellogg's attempt to make Cheerios, that didn't come along until 1960. Going back to genuine older breakfast cereal... I think my brother liked Wheaties, I didn't. Do they make Kix anymore? They used to be quite popular. They've long since been overshadowed by the heavily flavored versions, like Trix and Cocoa Puffs which did not exist when I was very little. I liked Quaker Puffed Wheat. (Sugar Crisp aka. Golden Crisp/Honey Crisp/ et al was one of the few sweetened cereals our mother would get for us sometimes.) Similar Quaker Puffed Rice was disappointing in that it was mostly tasteless and got soggy very quickly. Puffed rice as in Rice Krispies is a very different thing, which can be found in many different cultures. I wouldn't turn up my nose at Rice Krispies when I was little, but I mostly liked them for a change, not a daily breakfast food.
When the 1960s rolled around, supermarkets had run most old-fashioned non-self-service grocery stores out of business. With lots more shelf space in stores, companies were looking at kids more and more as cash cows, and began to produce many more flavored cereals, and bizarrely some parents began to think of mini-marshmallows as 'a part of a nutritious breakfast.' Just as glad mine didn't.
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