Nostalgia really doesn’t care about fickle adult priorities such as nutritional benefit or complexity in flavor layering, and that’s just fine by me.
The world is getting extreme (air fryers, Japanese snack delivery companies, Van fucking Leeuwen ice cream? cauliflower crust Costco frozen pizza? A sac (yes, that is official terminology) of White Castle?
There’s no denying the extremes of anything are tempting delights. The strongest weed. The fastest car. The biggest dick. Yeah, at times, I’m sure it feels fucking exuberantly rich, and that is perfectly fine once and a while.
If you’re smoking on some indica and you’ve not fallen asleep yet because you’ve been chasing UFO wormholes down Youtube (seriously, you should check out Bob Lazar and Jacques Vallee), then you know how the munchies can hit like a cement truck.
When those late-night munchies hit, you and I both know that you really can’t be bothered to prep jack shit, even if, in normal circumstances, you love cooking.
That, my friend, is where our knight in shining armor enters the scene in all of its machine-driven, hyper-processed, oddly unnatural glory.
Below are some key points I’d like to argue in defense of cereal being one of, if not perhaps, THE most under-appreciated munchie options out there, all while doing so humbly and consistently over generations.
Exciting Amount of Variety Awakens the Inner Child
Saturday morning cartoons. It’s almost a religion for children in America.
You can sleep in, not be pushed into showering or even changing out of your PJs, and then proceed to watch shows well into the afternoon when you start to get hungry for lunch, which, let’s face it, will usually be hotdogs, SphgettiOs, or if mom was feeling benevolent SphgettiOs WITH franks.
Of course, once you melt a little “Mexican” shredded cheese blend over them, shits don’t matter; it’ll be delicious.
The point is the number of cereal options on the market today is nothing short of dazzling. Shit, it was dazzling 20 years ago before they had all these high-protein, gluten-free, organic sub-variants of existing sugary brands we loved.
While many wonderments of childhood have their shiny veneer painfully scraped off through adulthood, the mental cataloging of all the cereal options available to you (I recommend keeping 4 options at all times if you’ve got a pantry) is a selfish delight that never fades.
Following Suggested Serving Sizes is an Incomprehensibility
A lot of storable foods are pre-portioned for you. Candy bars, ice cream pints, drive-through meal options, Jamba juice, etc. When you’ve got a raging case of the munchies, however, sometimes you got to “do work,” which means for those of you in control of your impulses, “eat a fuckton,” and cereal allows for that.
Cereal, potato chips, and usually, Costco peanut butter pretzel bites are among the few food options with unrestricted limits and are practically engineered to override your impulse control anyways.
Cereal is a particularly fun one because you can fill up a bowl full of whatever you want, Rice Krispies, for example, slice in 1/3rd a banana, add some organic whole milk (you are welcome to the club of whole milk enlightenment with open arms anytime) and you are set.
The mushiness of those that have already drowned in the ocean of rich local cow milk combined with the crunchiness of the doomed survivors still managing to float on top of the milk, their little forms piled one on top of another in a futile effort at salvation.
Then as an added bonus, you’ll almost always have some leftover milk at the bottom of your bowl that you can either gulp down as-is like digestif or you can use to morally justify hauling your fat ass back over to the cupboard to grab the box and top it up for a 2nd round because you don’t want to waste that milk!
Cereal Is Generally Still Affordable
This is a pretty obvious one but worth pointing out in comparison to other snacks like premium ice cream (Van Leeuwen, Talenti, be kind to our addicted souls); cereal is cheap AF.
So you get a large volume of something tasty and at a cheap price. Well, godamit, that’s all you really need to get an American to open their wallet.
The kicker, though? Some of the “budget” versions of the popular cereal brands are also really, REALLY good themselves. It doesn’t normally work like that; the budget versions of many foods are noticeably unsatisfactory, like wasabi, mustard, Vodka, or evaporated milk, for example.
But cereal wins on both accounts, as an affordable option and a suuuuper affordable option.
They Make Healthy Ones Now
Or at least that’s the word on the street. I’ve had some of the organic variants of popular options like Raisin Bran, Cocoa Puffs, and Golden Grahams.
I’ve seen pretty good reviews for some of the high-protein ones, too, like Special K Protein, Transparent Labs UNCUT (ahem), and of course, Magic Spoon.
If I find these high-protein cereals around me, I’ll definitely try them out. If you can afford something that’s even marginally healthier while deriving the same pleasure, then why the heck not?
They Last a Very Long Time
There are many snack options out there, but one of the most reliable elements of a GREAT munchie option is its shelf life after opening.
Shit, I’d very happily take a Bousin garlic & chive-covered Tristcuit any time, day or night but also, cheeses mold and crackers get soft, so you have to be cognizant to enjoy them within a week or so of opening them.
Cereal I’ve had sitting in my cupboard with the bag rolled up inside, and the box closed for what must be 3+ months without much discernible deterioration on the texture front.
Should you try to finish them before that? Well yeah, of course. But sometimes life comes up, or things get pushed to the back of the back-breaker known as the Lazy Susan (sorry, all you nice, gentle Susans out there) cupboard and forgotten.
With cereal, you know you have a real trooper of a snack pal, a food that will hold onto the hope of being digested for as long as is biologically possible before giving up and getting shitty.
This doggedness is a rare attribute and, although probably the result of some pretty nefarious chemical laboratory engineering and marketing (yes, you high fructose corn syrup), is something that can be a life changer when you are out of all other options.
Take Your Own Trip Down Memory Lane
In summary, it makes sense that Cookies Fam is breeding strains like “Cereal Milk” and “Pancakes,” given how deeply rooted the joy of processed morning breakfast is in so many Americans’ minds.
If you’ve drifted away from all of your childhood delights, I highly recommend planning a trip down memory lane in the near future for a deep smoke session.
Whether that memory is Pop Tarts, powdered sugar mini donuts, Eggo waffles, or one of the hundreds of various cereal forms/flavors.
Yes, refined sugar isn’t healthy, and you shouldn’t be eating any of these things daily as an adult, but for a treat once and a while to satiate your munchies, childhood breakfast foods are an absolute delight!
