The cereal killer

Our forefathers and foremothers had to gather their food by hunting and gathering. This took up much of the time of primitive man. Today, this primal need is satisfied by going shopping. Only instead of the man bringing home the bacon, the modern woman stalks her prey in the serenity of the grocery store instead of the jungle. Usually it’s much safer except when a shopper has more than 20 items in the express lane or gets the last package of HoHos.  

A hunter/gatherer is judged by the quantity and the quality of the food she brings home from the market. On that score, my wife must be considered the “Great White Hunter.” Last week she returned with her game bag filled with 14 boxes of cereal, including “Uncle Sam Cereal” in a red, white and blue box, the Nintendo Cereal System, and Outrageous Fruit and Grain. Of course my wife was aided in her quest by all of the advertisements that appear on television and in Good Housekeeping.

The bran scare has made such an impact on my wife that sitting in our pantry at the present time are the following cereals: Fruitful Bran, Bran Buds, Oat Bran Option, Bran News, Crunchy Bran, Cracklin Oat Bran, 40% Bran and 100% Bran. In fact, we have bran in every percentage. My wife thinks that just buying bran will make us healthier.

The problem is that we do a much better job of buying all this cereal than we do eating it. My shelf runneth over! I have boxes of Alpha Bits, Cocoa Puffs, Kix and Trix in the pantry, and I don’t know if they have made any of them since I was a kid. There is also a box of Christmas Crunch that I’m just not in the mood to eat in the middle of March.

The full article is available in our e-Edition. Click here to subscribe.