National Cereal Day !!!

So if you’re raising a milk-sopped spoonful of oats or bran or wheat today, give a little nod to National Cereal Day, which honors this classic morning meal and midnight snack on March 7.

Before cereal took on loads of sugar, cartoon characters as marketing mascots and high profit margins of today, it was a food product of quite a different animal.  Cereal back then was quite literally hard to swallow. Made of dense bran nuggets the cereal was so hard it had to be soaked overnight to make digestion not so taxing. Its taste was pretty bland, as well.

By 1939, thanks to sugar and marketing savvy, cereal as a health food started to change. That’s when the first sweetened cereal, Ranger Joe Popped Wheat Honnie appeared in grocery stores, which set the trend for a sweetened product that appealed to children. Radio and TV ads also advanced the popularity of cereal with cartoon characters appearing on the box and the box appearing or being mentioned in cartoons and stories.

• FUN Cereal Facts
• Cap’n Crunch’s full name is Horatio Magellan Crunch. He was born on Crunch Island in the Sea of Milk
• Kix cereal issued its atomic-energy inspired Lone Ranger ring in 1947.
• Of the more than 314 million people in the U.S., 49 per cent start their day with a bowl of cereal.
• Astronauts from Apollo 11 boosted their brain power while in space with a cereal breakfast. The cereal was mixed with fruit and pressed into cubes since the lack of gravity kept the astronauts from pouring it into a bowl with milk.
• There are 2.7 billion boxes — enough to wrap around the earth thirteen times — of cereal sold every year.

Morning, noon or night, Cereal makes a great breakfast as well as a snack on a daily basis.   What is your favorite cereal?