The Decline of Cold Cereal in the age of the Millennials

[Toliver]

The snarky article:

"Cereal: Millennials aren't spooning cereal: And here is the very flaky reason"

Quote

“Almost 40 percent of the millennials surveyed by Mintel for its 2015 report said cereal was an inconvenient breakfast choice because they had to clean up after eating it,” the Times reported.

There's a link in this article that leads to the original, less fatalistic NY Times article on the same subject (click).

 

Breakfast cereal was always the preferred breakfast item in our house eaten before heading off to school.

But then, I'm not a Millennial...I'm just an aging "Fred Flinstonnial". 

 

So has anyone else noticed the Millennials in their lives giving short shrift to breakfast cereals these days?

[pastrygirl]

Nothing to clean up if you eat it straight out of the box by the handful!  Duh   

 

But washing a bowl and a spoon is too much work?  Kids these days!  Hell in a handbasket, I tell ya!  And I'm only Gen X.

[Darienne]

And here am I (and others) a War Baby.  No sugar in our cereals.  My favorite was always Grape Nuts.  Haven't had it in decades.  (American and Canadian Grape Nuts have different formulas...the American ones are not quite so hard as the Canadian and are sweeter.) 

 

I should have said...no sugar coating on our cereals...

 

Edited February 26, 2016 by Darienne (log)

[Anna N]

I saw the story and was a little stunned wondering what it is that requires less cleanup than a bowl of cereal so I'm guessing takeout from McDonald's or somewhere or perhaps toast served on paper towel?  ( I have been guilty of the latter occasionally.) 

[Chris Hennes]

Well, compare cereal to the plethora of alternatives: things like Nutrigrain bars, yogurt cups, etc. A bowl of cereal probably adds ten minutes to your morning, so I think it's not unreasonable for someone to decide that grabbing something on the way out the door is a better option.

[Jaymes]

Totally understandable. You have the nightmare scenario of a bowl and spoon to wash. And for what?  The twin poisons - dairy and gluten? 

 

Not to mention the inconvenience of having to actually sit down and eat. 

 

Of course, that is the perfect time to catch up on all the news in the morning paper.

 

Oh wait...

Edited February 26, 2016 by Jaymes (log)

[AlaMoi]

less cleanup....

 

oh how quickly they forget.

summer camp.  little rectangular boxes with perforations.  slice down the middle, slice top&bottom, open box, insert milk, eat.

toss the whole thing when you're done.

 

those are gone methinks, but plastic cups with tear off lids are in every supermarket. 

the problem is you can't eat cereal, drive, text, talk on the phone, do your makeup _and_ update your Facebook page while eating out of the plastic cups....

[munchymom]

Nutritionally speaking, you might as well eat a handful of sugar with a vitamin pill. Who needs it?

[cakewalk]

Makes me think of those Kellogg's boxes, the mini ones that had perforated lines that could be opened (after considerable hassle) and were lined with paper, and you could pour milk right into it and use it as a bowl. (Was Kellogg's way ahead of its time?) But the main thing is, we didn't have a lot of other options. Things may not have been so rushed back then, but my mother still didn't have the time to make toast and eggs or whatever for our breakfast, so cold cereal was a Godsend. The health bars, etc. that are available today are so much faster and more nutritious, so why not? Also there are so many more options to buy something on the way to school or work. There's also such a different outlook on spending money. I grew up in the sixties, and most of us just didn't have the extra money that seems to be afloat now. Or our mindset towards it was just different. Spending that extra money on breakfast when you didn't have to, well, it just wasn't done back then. I'm not so sure if it was "better" or "worse," but the approach to how we spent our money was so different. So spending that extra ten minutes on breakfast was preferable to spending an extra three or four bucks on it.

[Jaymes]

5 minutes ago, munchymom said:

Nutritionally speaking, you might as well eat a handful of sugar with a vitamin pill. Who needs it?

 

Don't you think that depends entirely on which cereal you choose? I can assure you that neither I and my siblings nor my own children ate a "handful of sugar."

Edited February 26, 2016 by Jaymes (log)

[munchymom]

Of course. I was probably influenced by the article's picture of Mr. T Cereal and Cocoa Puffs. I can't abide sweet stuff first thing in the morning.

[Jaymes]

9 minutes ago, munchymom said:

Of course. I was probably influenced by the article's picture of Mr. T Cereal and Cocoa Puffs. I can't abide sweet stuff first thing in the morning.

 

Instead picture a mini rolled haystack of shredded wheat that came out of a box with a photo of (for some reason) Niagara Falls. 

 

We never got sugar on it - although sometimes fresh fruit. 

 

I wasn't quite so draconian with my own kids but those revolting sugary cereals like Count Chocula were never allowed in our house. 

Edited February 26, 2016 by Jaymes (log)

[ChocoMom]

Oh, this is fun thread!!!! 

My Mom was a health-food nut, bless her heart!  We had a rotation of Special K, Corn Flakes,Cheerios, All-Bran, Grape Nuts, and Rice Krispies. Whatever was in the pantry depended solely upon the coupons she'd cut from the previous Sunday paper. We were not allowed sugar on cereals, only honey. (This drove Daddy crazy. He loved sugar!!!)   Once or twice a year, Mom would let us pick out a box as a treat- one for me, one for my bro.  I'd ALWAYS pick Count Chocula. My brother would get Apple Jacks or Froot Loops.  I'd share my Count Chocula with Daddy, because we both loved chocolate so much. 

On Saturdays, we'd get eggs and some toast made with that thick nutty bread. Can't remember the name of it.  Sundays, back to cereal.  Now, if we were at Grandma Schultz's house....that was another story.  Grandma made potato bread from scratch, sliced -toasted and buttered a WHOLE LOAF. We'd chow that with a cup of coffee, then help Grandma with gardening and housework. Sometimes, if we were over there on the weekend, and Grandma had been to the A&P, we'd get bacon and eggs too. (This is the same Grandma that taught me how to make fudge, and play the piano.) She was awesome. 

 

The whole cereal thing started to go down the drain when we moved north and started farming. Having fresh eggs daily is amazing, and my younger kids would eat eggs and toast (from the homemade potato bread) almost everyday.   When the older kids would come around, they all turned into "Cereal Killers."  I have never seen a kid eat more cereal than my oldest step son. Good golly! He could down a whole box (the really BIG box) of Honey Smacks or Apple Jacks in one sitting. My little Andy started watching and learning. Ugh. Fast forward 5 years, and Andy was doing the same thing. Part of me wished for a dairy cow when it came time to buy groceries.  If I didn't buy the cereal, they'd talk their grandparents into getting it for them.   We're past that now, thankfully. Back to oatmeal, eggs and omelettes. Far more healthy and filling, I think. 

[MetsFan5]

I could be classified as a millennial and have always hated cold cereal, even as a child.  My mom was lucky if I would choke down half a glass of milk in the morning. 

  That said, I find the reasoning behind this trend to be faulty but agree that most of my contemporaries don't eat breakfast cereal. My Gen X husband rarely does. But I think it's because a lot of people just don't eat breakfast anymore. There's not a lot of "free time" in the mornings for those who work and since we are lazy, we like sleeping as late as possible. 

 

  Personally I rarely eat breakfast. I don't wake up hungry. 

[Katie Meadow]

I grew up eating english muffins or cold cereal: Sugar Pops, Frosted Flakes, Rice Crispies, Chex and Trix...that generation. And yes, I did order sea monkeys once. Those individual perforated boxes were definitely a highlight of childhood. I just eat toast with marmalade now. My husband is a treasure trove of cereal memorabilia, mostly stories that revolve around squabbling siblings or intense study of the back of the box. He still eats a bowl of cereal every morning after several slices of toast. And he still leaves 2 tablespoons of cereal in the box so no one can accuse him of finishing it off.

 

This thread made me realize I haven't any idea what our millenial daughter does for breakfast, so I just quizzed her. She claims she actually eats cold cereal with milk and fruit once in a while, but typically she slaps together a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and eats that when she gets to work. She says she ate a lot of oatmeal during her poverty stricken grad school years, since it was much cheaper than cold cereal. It really is amazing how much a box of cereal costs now.

Edited February 27, 2016 by Katie Meadow (log)

[Deryn]

I was fed mostly porridge 6 days a week ... sourdough pancakes on Sundays. I think Cheerios may have crept into the pantry by the time I was a teenager. My older sons grew up with only Cheerios, Cornflakes and Rice Krispies as their breakfast choices - though I did serve eggs and other stuff like waffles on weekends. My daughter, a few years younger than the boys, had much more choice when it came to cereal but I really tried to limit her access to the high sugar ones (which was difficult with all the tv ads that were emerging on every kids program back then). So that takes us from the early 1950s to the late 1990s, from hot to cold and from bowl to cardboard lined with waxed paper (daughter loved those but I don't think they were around when the boys were little).

Edited February 27, 2016 by Deryn (log)

[munchymom]

One way to tell you're poor: plastic bags of Malt-O-Meal instead of cardboard boxes of Kellogg's.

[demiglace]

They probably don't give away The Archies 45's on the cereal boxes anymore either!

[lesliec]

I fear I'm now too elderly to know exactly what a millenial is, but I'm going to take a stab that it's somebody born this side of 2001 (or 2000, but let's not get into that).

 

If this theory is true, the cereal-shunners can be no more than 15 (or 16) and should jolly well eat what they're given and be grateful!  [Cue dire warnings about starving children in Africa, etc.]

 

ETA: OK, apparently they're people born before 2000.  In which case you can't tell them anything.  Carry on.

Edited February 27, 2016 by lesliec
Added results of further research (log)

[Chris Hennes]

12 hours ago, munchymom said:

One way to tell you're poor: plastic bags of Malt-O-Meal instead of cardboard boxes of Kellogg's.

I grew up eating the Malt-O-Meal knock-offs. One of the fun things about trips in the summer was that we often got a couple multi-packs of those little boxes of name brand cereal. Those were the days... I haven't had a bowl of cereal for breakfast in years. For dinner? Much more often  

[Katie Meadow]

Millennials are generally children of the baby boomers. They follow Generation X, so the oldest millennials were born in the early eighties. The exact definition is of course fluid, but it is generally considered about a twenty year span. Some define the cutoff as late as 2004, but I think it is easiest to use 9/11 as an approximate birth of the youngest millennials. If you are younger than 15 you've never known a world without camera phones.

 

[rotuts]

I some times have Joe's O's for dessert.  with Tj's Agave syrup.

 

never for breakfast.  if there were the options people have now from the store

 

( independently of nutritional value etc )  cold cereal would have had a hard time taking off.

 

even in Battle Creek.

 

also, consider the Rise of the Microwave  .....

Edited February 27, 2016 by rotuts (log)

[cakewalk]

18 hours ago, Jaymes said:

 

Instead picture a mini rolled haystack of shredded wheat that came out of a box with a photo of (for some reason) Niagara Falls. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shredded_wheat#/media/File:Shredded_wheat_factory_newspaper_ad.png

http://www.niagarafallstourism.com/blog/niagara-falls-and-shredded-wheat/

 

A friend of mine alwasy insisted that a piece of shredded wheat looked like the falls. The lines, or texture, of a piece of shredded wheat looked like the cascading water of the falls. With a bit of imagination I could see that, but I never woulda thunk it.

 

[rotuts]

also of note :  most of the nutrition in 'most' cold cereals come from the Milk .

[Kerry Beal]

And pre microwave - you poured boiling water over your shredded wheat, drained it, added the cold milk and brown sugar.