New Product Review:

Corn Flakes With Real Bananas

Reviewed by Mr Breakfast on 3/9/2004

Sometimes I forget how good a bowl of simple Kellogg's Corn Flakes can be. Sprinkled with a teaspoon of sugar, it's a comfort food that conjures up childhood memories.

If we were all on the game show Jeopardy and the answer was "The reason God invented bananas", many of us would say, "What are Corn Flakes, Alex?" It's a cereal that seems custom made to accommodate sliced fruit and berries. The bastardized breakfast cereal industry suddenly seems quaint, wholesome and American when you sit in front of a bowl of Corn Flakes topped with a sliced bananas.

March, 2004: "Now you get the tantalizing combination of your favorite cereal mixed with slices of real banana right in the box!" No, this isn't from an episode of Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon. It's from the back of the cereal box. Similar statements are cropping up all over the cereal aisle. Freeze-dried fruit in breakfast cereal is here, like it or not.

Is that a good thing? The answer is no. Freeze-dried fruit in breakfast cereal is a bad thing. It's a symbol of America gone astray. When did we get so grossly lazy that we can't chop our own bananas? When did we loose respect for nature - the life force that's provided us with fresh fruit since Adam and Eve.

Among that many wonderful things that breakfast can be, it is the first chance of the day for families to be families - sitting together - being together. Here are two pictures: A mother slicing a fresh banana over her child's bowl of Corn Flakes while father reads his morning paper. The smell of rich coffee permeates the air. Here's the other picture: a freeze-dried banana.

My heart cries at the thought of a woman rushing through her morning to make meetings and schedules. Hurriedly, she plops bowls of cereal with freeze-dried fruit in front of her loved ones. Pouring the milk is the last bastion of preparation and care in the family breakfast. One day, she'll be able to just pull a prefabricated bowl of cereal from the cupboard and shake it strongly so the gasses and elements intertwine to hydrate the freeze-dried milk. Then, finally, comes a Jetson's style robot negating the need for mothers to do anything for their children - making human mothers into a gross distortion of what nature meant them to be? nurturers and providers.

To quote Environmental Scientist Jeremy Rifkin, "The modern age has been characterized by a Promethean spirit, a restless energy that preys on speed records and shortcuts, unmindful of the past, uncaring of the future, existing only for the moment and the quick fix. The earthly rhythms that characterize a more pastoral way of life have been shunted aside to make room for the fast track of an urbanized existence. Lost in a sea of perpetual technological transition, modern man and woman find themselves increasingly alienated from the ecological choreography of the planet."

That said, what does Kellogg's Corn Flakes With Real Bananas taste like? It tastes pretty good. It's a lightly sweet cereal and the banana pieces maintain their natural banana flavor - no doubt thanks to a few chemicals. Setting aside my philosophical misgivings, my only other complaint would be the texture of the banana pieces which is similar to Styrofoam. This texture dissipates into more of a banana texture as the pieces absorb milk. But even after several minutes, you have banana pieces that are soft on the outside and somewhat crunchy on the inside.

Final score: 6 points for the corn flakes minus 3 points for the texture abnormalities plus 1 point for the authentic banana flavor.

Final recommendation: Get off your lazy butt America. Chop your own bananas for the sake of our future.

$3.89 reflects the price of a 13.1 ounce box.

The price we paid: $3.89