"CornFlakes" news and stories

Those long and lean cereal boxes we've all grown accustomed to might soon be a thing of the past. Advertising Age reports that Kellogg's is testing a new "space-saving" cereal box design that will still give us 12 oz. of crunchy breakfast, but come in a much shorter and fatter box. They think this new design will fit more easily in pantries and on shelves.

What is most interesting, however, is how they're talking about the change, citing improvements to their "footprint," as well as "efficiency and effectiveness." Sounds like using environmental terms in shifty ways to me. What footprint are they speaking of? The space a box takes up in your kitchen? Methinks that hurdle has already been passed. I mean, we've had the same shape for eons.

Tropicana, Corn Flakes ... breakfast will never be the same! What do you think of their new boxy scheme?

[via Serious Eats]

That wasn't a typo in the title. Anaphrodisiac is the opposite of aphrodisiac. It's something that quells the raging libido.

Both graham crackers and corn flakes were developed as a way to keep people from having sex.

Sylvester Graham, the inventor of graham flour and the purported inventor of graham crackers, believed that if food sat in the stomach for too long, it overstimulated the organs and caused sexual arousal. He also felt that rich, fatty foods would only increase sexual urges. According to Graham, more healthy graham crackers meant less sex.

John Harvey Kellogg, one of the Kellogg brothers who invented corn flakes, subscribed to Graham's principles. Cornflakes originally had no sugar and were served to the patients in his psych ward. Kellogg believed that bland cornflakes equaled a bland bedroom.

Read more about the history of graham crackers and cornflakes on Wikipedia.

What foods do you think of as anaphrodisiacs? I'll start the list with beans - for obvious reasons.

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Scientists have answered one of the great unsolved problems of the age - they have found the secret to the perfectly crunchy cornflake.

French boffins down in Nantes have looked at the the cornflake’s 'alveolar structure' (whatever the 'ell that is!)  and have identified the factors affecting its crunchiness. They also used a 'pioneering mechanism' to test the acoustic performance of the 'crunch' and discovered the exact sound that gives the most satisfactory noise when eaten. 

Comparing why the Argentine Plata corn stays flaky when most European varieties do not, they found that crunchiness depends not so much on the manufacturing method as on the 'alveolar structure', in particular the 'interface between proteins and starch'. Professional tasters decreed which flake made the most satisfying sounds in the mouth, and which went soggy in milk and stuck to their palates. Terrible things soggy cornflakes. Keeps me awake at night.

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