How Pink Hearts, Orange Stars, Yellow Moons, Green Clovers, Blue Diamonds and Purple Horseshoes Made Me an Adult.

My “I’m an adult” moment came when a $4.39 box of Basic 4 became my cereal splurge of choice

I heart Lisa.
I heart my kids.
I heart Lucky Charms, Cookie Crisp and most of all, Fruity Pebbles.

I heart my dental insurance.

I think that flavor/satisfaction equation is so powerful it needs a bigger platform to shine.

I need to forward this. It’s life changing.

Did anyone else notice that the film on the top of your Lucky Charms bowl would make excellent wallpaper glue? I think that was my I’m an adult moment.

Also, right now, while my daughter is saying “let’s play we are half womans half horse!” I remember spending six hours of every day being able to play games like that and only stopping for a quick bowl of Lucky Charms. Now I would just love to eat my Kashi and read the paper in peace. Oh my gosh, I’m old.

This is too funny. In what must have been a highly deliberated compromise in my childhood home, my father would come back from the store every Saturday morning with either donuts or Lucky Charms to reward us for Saturday chores. My mother never said anything about it so I know she must have made concession for it in some way. I’ve somehow managed to fool my family into false notions of “unhealthy” so that when they think they’re cheating I only cringe the slightest bit.

sooooooooo. What stratosphere on the age spectrum does this put me: I make my family eat grits, oatmeal, cream of wheat or pancakes/waffles because cold cereal makes my teeth hurt. Not the wussy, “Oohh, the sugar, I can feel it coating my beautiful enamel.” But, “Dang! this stuff is too hard!”.

I do believe that was my light bulb.

We were only allowed to have even healthy “dry” cereal on Sundays. Every other day it was oatmeal or whatnot. I gorged on Honey Bunches of Oats in college, but like you, I got over it. I still look at Cookie Crisp in awe though. Cookies for breakfast, what must it be like!

Yes, this is hilarious!

Growing up we were only awarded a “sugar cereal” of our choice each year on our birthdays. For some reason I always choose Trix or Fruit Loops; all those enticing colors, I suppose. It wasn’t until about a month ago, when I sent my husband to Rite Aid to pick up some milk and he came home with Cocoa Puffs, that I realized I had missed out on the most delicious, chocolaty goodness (in the form of breakfast cereal) that ever existed. If there was an award for the best cereal milk ever slurped from a bowl, Cocoa Puffs would win. Hands down!

I don’t buy Lucky Charms, but I always try to feed my kids oatmeal while I eat the Honey Nut Cheerios. Where’s the sense in that?

This post and all the comments are awesome! My childhood experience fell into the rarely any sugar cereal camp. I also followed the pack and went crazy with sugar cereals when I went to college. The funny thing is I still purchase sugar cereals occasionally (love Lucky Charms) but they sit on my shelf for a long time. I find myself wanting mini wheats or raisin bran flakes more often. So weird to be an adult…

One of my sisters has the rule that the kids can have sugar cereals on Sundays after church (snack/small lunch) if they’d been good. Last month after my nephew’s baptism on Saturday, another nephew was confused and distraught that they couldn’t eat sugar cereal after returning home. I think he equates having to wear church clothes, pray and sit still with sugar cereal as the reward.

My mom somehow convinced all of us that tomatoes were a great reward for being good. I can still hear her, “If you clean up your room and make your bed, you can eat an entire tomato! You can even eat cottage cheese with it!”

Sick.

But still, there is nothing that makes my bad days better than eating a tomato like an apple.

My husband always asks me to sleep in another bed on those nights (he’s only {sorta} joking)–he’s highly disturbed by it.

@sar

Yup. What Lisa said.

@Leah

Chef Boy-R-Dee. Me, too. Not kidding. Provo+microwave+Spaghetti O’s= disillusionment of Eliot’s Wasteland proportions

@No One You KNow

Bigger platform? Amen.

@Howard

I have to confess that I’m still tweaking the Grape Nuts Flavor Factor Equation (or FlGN). And I’ll explain (or give excuses) why.

In broad theoretical brushstrokes, it would appear that this should be an easy equation to calculate. Easy, like Cheerios (which is cake: FlCh=-1.8|x|+10), because Grape Nuts only has one variable to calculate: the Grape Nut itself. However, the majesty and mystery of the Grape Nut does not reveal itself so simply. Primarily because of this one question: What is a Grape Nut? (Not a grape. Not a nut. Just delicious.)

Tentatively, the equation (but only for minutes 0-6) looks like this: http://tinyurl.com/grapenuts1

This equation shows that Grape Nuts are good as the milk soaks in a little. Then there’s a peculiar (i.e., not tasty) transition as the milk soaks in more (approximately minute 3). After the milk has soaked in a bit more, it’s delicious. And then sudden, at that moment when all the milk is gone (minute 6), it’s just weird (and bad) again. Where does that milk go? Only the nuts know.

Additionally, all previous equations had all assumed 1% milk. We are busy developing multivariable analyses, which would include, as you noted, milk fat’s effect. See, e.g., http://tinyurl.com/milkfattime

The Im(z) axis is the percentage of milk fat. The Re(z) represents time away from peak flavor factor (PFF). And Re(cos(z)) shows the flavor score. Please not how much additional flavor whole milk adds, in this instance, to Frosted Flakes: a breathtaking 14.8, which dwarves skim and 1% milk (which is no surprise to any real cold cereal connoisseur). I believe Lucky Charms might score a truly epic 20. Testing are ongoing.

(Further: Note that cereals such as Lucky Charms, by introducing multiple cereal media, create the need for more complex equations. One factor to account for the delicately frosted oats stratum. Another to capture the effect of the perfectly crisp and appropriately liquid resistant marshmallows. An additional adjustment, the gestalt variable (G’), also needs to be included for any multimedia cereal to have an accurate equation.)

And, btw, growing up, there were no sugar cereals in my house. Honey on Cheerios was the big treat. (Deprivation can lead to fixation. Just so you know.)

Tagg,

I appreciate that you used Wolfram to model the pleasure derived as a function of time in the milk for various cereals, but I’d have to disagree about the merits of Grape Nuts. It is true that they are not grapes nor nuts; they are rocks. The only impact that milk might have on a rock is erosion. . . and good riddance.

I suppose that I’m not an adult yet.

Two comments on this delightful post
1. In Japan most cold cereal is sold in little cute packages and is considered a special treat, eaten dry, like a small pack of chips or Fritos. Very sensible, I might add.
2. Tagg, your analyses are brilliant–and here I thought higher math was only useful for getting into space or something else equally esoteric.

Thanks,Lisa–a very thought provoking article–but I still prefer whole wheat toast and miso soup for breakfast.

My mom didn’t let us eat sugar cereal very often either, and having 4 brothers, I never got much when she DID buy it. I know, poor me. I made up for it by living off of Life cereal and Marshmallow Mateys at the Cannon Center freshman year. My favorite is now Kashi, or when I want something sweet, Honey Bunches of Oats. That cereal ROCKS.

I loved the equation. My major comes in handy after all these years. Thanks Tagg.

I think I had the same wxperience. At the same Smith’s. Or maybe it was Reams??