OPINION —
I don’t know about you, but when I was a child, Saturday mornings were magical. I could hardly be pried out of bed for school during the week. But come a Saturday morning and I was up early, sitting on the floor in front of the TV watching cartoons. The good stuff, like Johnny Quest, Scooby Doo, The Jetsons and Schoolhouse Rock. Right there with cartoon time was a big bowl of cereal covered in cold milk.
Now that I’ve set that mental image, I bet that many of you have the same memory of cartoons and a favorite cereal. For the longest time my favorite was a big ‘ol bowl of Honeycomb. At some point I switched over to Cap’n Crunch with Crunchberries. Every once in a while, I would stray into bowl of Lucky Charms, Honey Smacks, Frosted Flakes. Back then we ate more sugar in one bowl of Saturday morning cereal than whole villages in third world countries would eat in a week.
There’s no telling how many times I rooted around up to my elbows in a box of cereal to fish out a little prize. I can still remember cutting off the back of a box of Alpha-bits before it was even empty because there was an actual 45-record of the Jackson 5 singing “ABC” made out of cardboard that actually worked.
There was always that miracle moment when the allotted milk turned out to be just right for the amount of cereal. But of course, if you wound up with a bit of extra milk you just picked that bowl up and drank the last of the newly flavored milk straight from the edge of the bowl.
That walk down memory lane leads me to my point: I have a theory that the richness of this country … the proof of the success of capitalism, and the free market … can be demonstrated on any given day by simply walking down the cereal aisle at the local grocery store.
Think about it. You push your shopping basket onto the cereal aisle and for no less than 50 yards you are faced with a non-stop menagerie of brightly colored boxes from floor-level to head-high, containing the ultimate in dry goods: Breakfast cereal. Today, if you don’t know for a fact what cereal you’re planning to buy, you could spend half of your time in the grocery store just perusing the overwhelming number of options. Comedian Erma Bombeck once said, “Like religion, politics and family planning, cereal is not a topic to be brought up in public. It’s too controversial.”
Cereal is a uniquely American phenomenon. The first instance was allegedly invented in 1863 by a New Yorker named James Caleb Jackson who owned a healthcare sanitarium. His invention was called “Granula”, and was basically a graham flour dough that he dried and broke into shapes that were so hard that they had to be soaked in milk overnight before they could be eaten. It sounds like pieces of cinder block, but it apparently caught on.
Kellogg and Post both came up with their own versions. Then came Grape-Nuts in the late 1800’s, Puffed Rice just before WWI, Wheaties in the ’20s. Cheerios came along in the 1940’s, and Frosted Flakes in the ’50s. By the ’70s the sugared cereal wars were in full swing, and in the late ’90s cereal got virtuous and all of the healthy brands began taking up part of the cereal aisle.
The cold cereal industry has become a worldwide powerhouse. In 2015 alone, General Mills sold over a $1 billion worldwide in plain Cheerios. In the year 2021, breakfast cereal in the US alone generated $23.8 billion in revenue. Globally, breakfast cereal in that same year totaled approximately $64.3 Billion. Showing no sign of letting up, global cereal sales are projected to reach $95 billion by the year 2030. That’s amazing. And y’all, that’s classic America.
I find this fascinating, but more than that, I believe it illustrates so clearly that we live in the most amazing country in the history of the world. One man created some dry bricks to soak in milk and 150 years later, it has spawned one of the largest sectors of the manufactured food industry in the world.
Capitalism did that.
It is so easy to take all that we are as a nation for granted. We are a nation with all of the possibilities, and an amazing number of choices. The breakfast aisle of your corner grocery is proof that we are not a society that believes in being confined, or limited, in any way. In America, regardless of your current lot in life, you have the ability to wake up in the morning and change your lot in life.
In this country, you can dig ditches until you own your own shovel, and then two shovels, and then hire someone else to tote that extra shovel and the next thing you know you have your own crew digging ditches. Any country that can offer hundreds of different versions of breakfast cereal can also offer so much more.
Now that I’ve enlightened you to the wonders of breakfast cereal, I hope that you never look at the cereal aisle the same way again. And every time you pour out some of your favorite crunchy goodness and pour milk over it, take note that in that one bowl there is more than just a few minutes of eating … that’s a bowl full of ‘Merica.
Phil Williams is a former state senator, retired army colonel and combat veteran, and a practicing attorney. He previously served with the leadership of the Alabama Policy Institute in Birmingham. Williams currently hosts the conservative news/talkshow Rightside Radio Monday through Friday from 2 to 5 p.m. on multiple channels throughout north Alabama. (WVNN 92.5FM/770AM-Huntsville/Athens; WXJC 101.FM and WYDE 850AM – Birmingham/Cullman.)
His column appears weekly throughout Alabama. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of this news source. To contact Williams or request him for a speaking engagement go to www.rightsideradio.org.
