the good old days

Here’s a cute little cereal advertisement (featuring a puppy!) from the 1950s, which harkens back to even simpler times before.

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Listening to any commercial, I automatically pick apart any unusual claims. Grape nuts apparently had more energy per spoonful than any other breakfast cereal in 1955. No doubt, this was true, since Grape Nuts are really dense. They’re just “homogenized nuggets” of baked grains (and now I know which grains), compact in shape (unlike corn flakes) and lacking the air pockets common to so many cereals. That’s why Grape Nuts are sold in smaller boxes than most other mass-market breakfast foods.

I like Grape Nuts, although I haven’t eaten them for breakfast in years. I wouldn’t want to eat them every day though. They kind of weigh on the stomach. While I can understand how parents with fickle, finicky children might benefit from having only one food available for breakfast (avoiding a lot of whining and indecision), I pretty shocked to see the entire kitchen cupboard completely jammed full of Grape Nuts and nothing else.

Maybe it’s a good idea to keep unnecessary complications—unnecessary decisions—from cluttering up your life, but frankly, I think the gains to be had on the food choice front are pretty minimal. And I enjoy some variety on my breakfast.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 20th, 2009 at 5:29 pm and is filed under advertisement, food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.