Cheerios opening up breakfast to all families

The following column originally ran on June 5, 2013 on our sister blog, BalanceofFood.com.

If you think a bowl of Cheerios is too healthy, you could mix half and half with Apple Jacks and create your own cereal treat. There the two cereals would be — side by side — in perfect harmony for your mouth.

Of course, some could object that Cheerios shouldn’t be so close to Apple Jacks much less Froot Loops and should stick with other Cheerios.

Now Cheerios even comes in chocolate Cheerios so you can mix regular and chocolate together.

Cereal is universal in that they are all one in the bowl of life. People are that way, too, though you might not think that was true given the negative reaction to the multiracial family in the latest Cheerios ad.

If you eat several different kinds of cereal in the same bowl and close your eyes when you are eating it, you can’t tell whether you are eating regular Cheerios or Chocolate Cheerios or Apple Jacks or Froot Loops. I’ve done this with snack chips and you’d be surprised how much is lost when you eat them all together.

People of all different colors eat all different kinds of cereal. You might hate another human being for a number of reasons, but find that both of you like the same cereal.

People of a mixture of colors and ethnicities, as the young girl in the ad is a classic example, has literally existed long before breakfast cereal was invented. So literally from the beginning of breakfast cereal, families who look like the family in the ad have been eating breakfast cereal together.

All the ad did was bring attention to that fact. Most of us didn’t think much about the connection. It was silly of the girl to pour Cheerios on the heart of her sleeping father, but such silliness transcends everything else.

In life and Life cereal, there is room at the breakfast table for all different kinds of cereal and the people who eat them. Some people just need to scoot over and make a little more room.