"cereal" news and stories

For your lunchtime pleasure, I'm presenting a series of my favorite bento boxes. Bento are Japanese home-prepared meals served in special boxes, usually eaten for lunch at work or school. These days, bento enthusiasts from all over the world share their creations on Flickr.

Bento: It's not just for lunch anymore, as proven by Amanky's neat little breakfast. We've got Honey Nut Cheerios with purple and yellow Easter chick sprinkles tossed in, plain yogurt with pink sprinkles, baby carrots with ranch dip, and mixed nuts with dried banana chips. Beats the snot out of a Pop-Tart, no?

Source

Lots of attention gets focused on the tobacco industry and how advertisements appeal to the kids, but that's not the only industry making the unhealthy irresistible. There is, of course, those cartoon characters that promote sugary goodness.

The BBC reports that a new report conducted by Which? is focusing on those cartoon icons and accusing them "of not aiding the fight against childhood obesity." They note that out of the 19 characters used by food companies, none of them helped promote healthier foods, and how the foods they promote easily suck up much of a child's suggested max for salt and sugar (nothing surprising there). But they are careful to note that they don't want us to lose the characters we've come to love over half a century, but rather to see them promoting some healthy products. Meanwhile, the Food and Drink Federation said it was "baffled as to why Which? wants to take all the fun out of food." Well that's just a bit of an overreaction.

I have to say, Which? has a point. I remember giving my parents a heck of a fight over the "no sugar cereal on weekdays" rule. I was obsessed with sugar cereals, the toys, the whole thing. I wanted Snap, Crackle, and Pop toys, I would've eaten Honeycombs 3 times a day if I could. And it certainly wasn't just cereal -- I can't count how many jugs of Kool Aid I drank to get a special pitcher and glasses....

While I regularly lose my keys, often misplace my wallet, and have been known to forget my own name, I pride myself on my impressive ability to remember completely random facts. My wife calls me the largest repository of useless knowledge in the Western Hemisphere, and I have to admit that my mind is a steel trap, at least when it comes to completely meaningless trivia.

With that in mind, I was eager to take Mental Floss' cereal trivia test. Having spent much of my youth sucking down mass quantities of sugary slop while watching Saturday morning TV shows, I figured that I could easily take whatever Mental Floss had to dish out.

I received a humbling 50%. If you get a chance, take the quiz and let me know how you did. I need to know if there's anybody else out there who's feeling the icy hand of trivial humiliation!

When you were a kid, did you get lectures about a healthy breakfast? Did you suffer under specific weekday breakfast rules to keep your mind alert for all your classes? I remember growing up with a huge urge for the weekend -- not for cartoons but to have sugar cereals.

Spoofing that idea, America for the Arts created a faux commercial for Raisin Brahms, which you can see above. As part of their campaign that stresses the importance of arts being taught at school, the faux ad shows a family that gets super-smart after eating arts-enriched Raisin Brahms, and being visited by late German composer Johannes Brahms.

Forget cereal boxes with sports heroes -- where are the classic composers, artists, thinkers, writers ... ?!

[via Serious Eats]

There's so much news about Michael Phelps right now, I bet the guy could write his own ticket for the foreseeable future. When I heard a news blurb that he was going to be on a cereal box by next month I didn't think much about it.

Naturally I figured Mr. Phelps would be on the front of a Wheaties box, but apparently that's not the case. According to an article in the New York Daily News, the swimming champion will lend his image to Frosted Flakes (move over Tony). Some nutritionists are a little concerned about the message that sends to kids. While Michael Phelps can handle the excess sugar of Frosted Flakes, experts are concerned about regular cereal eaters who don't burn as many calories as he does.

I admit I was a little surprised by Michael Phelps' choice. It makes more sense when you think about how many calories he eats and burns through in one day, but you'd think the guy would be a little more interested in promoting slightly more healthy breakfast choices. Would you buy Frosted Flakes just because Mr Phelps was on the box?