Cereal Killer!

When my husband woke up this morning and saw me in the kitchen, he immediately turned and left the room, only to return with the camera. I didn’t even think he knew we had a camera. WARNING: This picture is not pretty. This is how my husband found me this morning:

Due to the fact that we had no leftover pizza or spaghetti, I resorted to something I rarely do. I ate breakfast cereal this morning. I had a new box of Raisin Bran in the pantry and while I ate my cereal I was disappointed in the number of raisins in my bowl. I started thinking about Kellogg’s claim that they have “Two Scoops” of raisins in their raisin bran. What does this mean? Two Scoops? A scoop isn’t a unit of measure. You never see “add one scoopful of flour to the bowl” in any cookbook. What does that mean? How big are these scoops? Also, if each box has two scoops, what about the different size boxes? Is there a higher ratio of raisins to flakes in the smaller boxes? More flakes and less raisins in the larger sizes? Does the scoop size change depending on the size of the box? It would have to, right?
You can’t use the same size scoop for the 30 oz. box that you would use for the mini individual size box.

If they did use the same size scoop with that amount of raisins in such a small container, I could pretty much forget about seeing any bran what-so-ever in my bowl, couldn’t I Raisin Bran? At that point you could just call the cereal “Raisins”, and there's already a cereal like that. It's called raisins.

I began getting a little worked up about this and decided to perform a scientific test. I had another whole, unopened box of cereal which I dumped on the counter. This will irritate my husband that we have two full boxes of the same cereal opened but I did this in the name of science. This was a 30 oz box. I separated the raisins from the cereal and put the raisins in my scoop. The dog sat at my feet and ate a few stray flakes from the floor, (not so scientific).

Then I put the contents of the scoop into my 1 cup measuring cup.

Approximately, 2/3 of a cup of raisins. In other words, two 1/3 cup scoops of raisins in a 30 oz. box of raisin bran.

So, here’s my beef.

1) Kelloggs is not being specific about the amount of raisins they are putting in their raisin bran but they put “Two Scoops” on the package to make us think, “Oh WOW, Two whole scoops! That has to be more than the other brand, otherwise, why would they mention it?”

2) There are either too few scoops or the scoops are too small to my liking.

3) The front of the box also states, “Crispy, Wheat Bran Flakes” and yes, they are, until you add milk. At which point they immediately become soggy and resemble the texture of brown wet cement.

4) It could be argued that if there are at least two raisins in the box, then there are two scoops of raisins in the box.

5) Raisin Bran also claims it is part of a healthy breakfast. That is true if the other part of your breakfast is plain yogurt and a banana. It’s loaded with 17 grams of sugar and if it’s not that healthy, then gosh darn it, they should make it taste better.

6) Sunny is a scoop-wielding liar.

I think from now on, I’m buying plain bran cereal and adding my own raisins. It's not like it's a complicated process to add the raisins. That will show them.

Holly

xxx-ooo