There are certain rules about eating breakfast cereal: a small bowl, not after 10am, sugar on after the milk and never eat Shredded Wheat. How do you eat yours?
This month on How to Eat - the blog trying to establish a code of good gastronomic conduct for the nation's favourite dishes - we turn our spoon to breakfast cereal. Will the debate turn sour? I should coco, pops.
Hours of consumption
Before 10am or after 9.30pm (if you get peckish watching Newsnight). Like regularly finding yourself in the pub on weekday afternoons, eating breakfast cereal in the middle of the day is a sign that you are letting things slide. It is the behaviour you might expect of a student. Or a freelance journalist.
Top five classic cereals
Cornflakes; Weetabix; porridge (made with a mix of milk and water and served plain - a little sugar is enough of a sweetener, and personally I've never got cold fruit with hot oats); bran flakes; your own muesli.
The latter is a hassle, but, then, you could spend a lifetime searching for the commercial brand that contains the correct ratio of fruit, nuts, oats etc and which excludes traumatic items such as freeze-dried raspberries (too much of a face-screwingly tart sensory onslaught in the morning) and (gip!) dried apricots.
Cereals that aren't worth the washing up
Shredded Wheat. It's good for your heart? I find that ironic, as eating it makes me wish for an early death: it's like trying to wolf down a welcome mat.
"Malted wheats". Forget the Higgs-Boson, scientists should be trying to crack a far greater mystery. Namely, what is the optimum amount of milk for a serving of Shreddies? Too little and it's like chewing bark. Too much and you have a bowl of papier mache mulch. Surely crisp crunch working down to a silky, milk-sodden sub-stratum is the correct textural progression in a bowl of cereal? Not such trudging drudgery.
Sugar Puffs. Disgusting. Like pouring milk over a bowl of toffee popcorn.
Cereals that no-one over the age of seven should eat
There are certain rules about eating breakfast cereal: a small bowl, not after 10am, sugar on after the milk and never eat Shredded Wheat. How do you eat yours?
Anything that turns the milk chocolatey; Froot Loops / Cheerios (which look too much like some sort of dog treat); Golden Nuggets; Weetabix choc chip mini; Honey Nut Loops; Rice Krispies (it seems a good idea, a snap, crackle and pop portal back to your childhood, but, in retrospect, they don't actually taste of anything, do they? It is a harsh lesson, but you can't go back); Curiously Cinnamon, if only for its imperative slogan "Crave Those Crazy Squares". Weetos v Alien Invaders chocolate toffee flavour. No, I am not making this up.
Sugar
As adults, surely we can immediately dismiss all modern, sugar-loaded cereals of the frosted, honey-coated, chocolate 'n' caramel-laced varieties? This is not dessert. Who wants such unnaturally sweet flavours at breakfast? Plus, have you seen how much sugar those cereals contain? Kellogg's cornflakes run to 8g per 100g, Kellogg's Crunchy Nut cornflakes 35g.
The NHS considers over 15g total sugars in every 100g to be a high level. Manufacturers take (what, for a growing lad, constitutes a laughably small) 30g of cereal and 125ml of semi-skimmed milk to be a "typical" serving. On that basis, a small bowl of Crunchy Nut would account for 17g, or just under one-fifth (18.8%) of a woman's daily recommended sugar intake.
If you are eating a more sensible cereal, and sprinkling (unrefined, Fairtrade) sugar on top, two things are key. Moderation: cereal is not simply a delivery vehicle for sugar. Distribution: that sugar must only be applied after the milk, so that it clings to the wet top layer to form a surface crust. There are people who like the sugar to collect at the bottom of the bowl, where they scoop it up with the last spoonful of milk. Those people are weirdos. One distinct advantage of Weetabix is that, by laboriously crushing them into milk, you can create a flat layer (there should be no more than a millimetre of surface milk; if necessary drain any excess), across which you can then evenly distribute your sugar. If you are serious about sugar distribution, it is the only way to go.
Although, do you even need sugar? Nowadays, I top my bran flakes with some sort of more interesting nuts and fruit-type muesli-effort. I started out on Co-Op's own brands - the, presumably freeze-dried, fruit has a nice, almost crystallised texture - but have progressed (and can there be a clearer sign of my descent into middle-class degeneracy?) to Dorset Cereals, specifically their berries and cherries. I justify it to myself on the basis that, using a couple of tablespoons a day, it's a reasonable expense. But, you're right, come the revolution I should be first up against the wall.
It is probably a habit I should wean myself off, anyway. I thought I was being healthy, but it turns out that even wholegrain bran flakes are surprisingly sugary (around 16g per 100g). They might be the tastiest of the processed breakfast flakes, but with a top layer of muesli that is a shedload of sugar.
Milk
Like your football team or bank, the milk you drink is determined in childhood. After which, it is impossible to change. Decades of semi-skimmed, mean that, to me, full fat - much less Jersey gold - now tastes like double cream. Although, it remains infinitely superior to skimmed milk, which, in taste, texture and colour, is like something you would empty out of a mop bucket.
On milk's radical outer fringes there are products which, I am sure we can agree, are inappropriate (raw milk is too full-on, a waste here) or so sub-standard (UHT - why would you do that to yourself?), that they have no place in your breakfast bowl. Some of that bacteria that Cravendale remove with their ceramic filters must be good stuff, because it definitely tastes subtly different; cleaner, less characterful. If this is all you can pick up at the 24-hour garage in an emergency, I urge you: have toast.
Oh, and if you are making me cereal using full-fat or gold, please shake the bottle. There is almost nothing more stomach-churning than being handed a bowl of cereal that is crowned with clots of cream. It is like someone has hoicked the contents of their sinuses over your breakfast.
Drink
Tea, rust-coloured, unfussy tannin-packed tea-tea. None of that Earl Grey / Rooibos nonsense. Or coffee. Black coffee, its bitterness offset by the sweet milk in your bowl. Fruit juice is fine as a starter, but, boy, a mouthful of cornflakes and a swig of Tropicana jars with a mighty clang.
Bowl
"Jesus! I don't need the Guardian to tell me what bowl to use for cereal," you cry. But are you sure? An acquaintance used to eat cereal from - get this - a large, shallow soup bowl. It was less breakfast, more a seafaring expedition. Cereal should never be served in anything with an extensive lip. Can't hold it in the palm of your hand? It ain't a cereal bowl.
So, breakfast cereal: how do you eat yours?
Photo source: Thinkstock
