On the Diversity of Cereal

	I doubt there's any food that comes in as many varieties as pasta. Perhaps some would argue that cereal is equally diverse; I disagree. First of all, pasta is made from the same basic stuff, occasionally with a little meat or cheese. Cereals, however, have little in common other than that they come in the same type of packaging: a flimsy cardboard box containing a maddening waxed-plastic bag. Really. What's that cereal that's basically miniature cookies? The name escapes me now, but anyway: it makes one wonder. What defines a cereal as a cereal? I'm sure an exception can be found to any definition. Warm oatmeal is about as similar to the cookie stuff as a horse and buggy is to a Ferrari. And it's not as if cereal all grows on different varieties of the Breakfastus cerealium tree. Perhaps they'd have different subspecies: B. cerealium oaty, B. cerealium waytoosweetendia, and B. cerealium storebrandgenerica, to name a few. Anyway, the ingredients listed are extremely varied. The ingredients in oatmeal are likely to be dried oatmeal. The ingredients in Lucky Charms marshmallows are, however, as follows: sugar, modified corn starch, corn syrup, dextrose, gelatin, calcium carbonate, yellows 5 & 6, blue 1, red 40, and artificial flavor. Honestly, I think there's something wrong when "blue" qualifies as an ingredient.