Considering people's financial situations today, people need to be quite wise with their money management--there's no room for frivolous expenses. There's not one good reason one needs to go buy some name brand-name clothes, an 32" LCD HDTV, or anything organic. People that may have gone out to eat several times in a week may need to reconsider their food expenses.
My mother is someone who has never been a victim of frivolous spending. Through my years witnessing her shopping patterns, she absolutely does not spend a penny on anything for herself: makeup, clothes, other stuff women buy, etc. However, on occasion...err...well, a lot of the time she will completely own the house when she goes food shopping.
It's important for people today to save as much money as possible when going grocery shopping (e.g using coupons, buying items only on SALE, comparison shopping, eating all the free samples, etc.) My mom often takes a good hour or so out of her busy schedule to skim the local grocery sale ads for the week to find the best bargain she can...and then find a supplemental coupon from her coupon folder (yes, coupon folder) to make that bargain a steal.
What has been the result of all this bargain food shopping from my mom you say? Well, if anyone still remembers the Y2K scares from ten years ago, people were scared shitless waiting for the apocalypse; they were stocking up on essentials (non-perishable food, water, clothes, so on and so forth..) My house still has a truckload of canned food from 1999. I know that canned food can last awhile taking into account the preservatives that are inside, but sometimes I'm afraid to open up that can of Dinty Moore beef stew from god knows how long.
I would take pictures of all the food in my house, but to be honest, it would take me hours to take enough pictures, plus I'd rather not clutter this blog with too many photos. I'd also rather not try to embarrass my mom too much since she's still my mom *awe* I'll let the one to two readers of my blog use their imagination for once. Visualize a house with three full size refrigerators as well as an economy-sized commercial chest freezer. Some small, local grocery stores can get by without having that many refrigerators/freezers.
Whenever there is something food related on sale, she'll take the Y2K approach every time--stock up on it as much as possible. For example Meijer (a local supermarket) often times has sales on 1 lb. bags tilapia fish. As far as I know there has never been a limit on these and she goes completely crazy on them; often times getting 12 or more bags of tilapia fish. I'm not too concerned about that since I like them, and one bag only has like four filets, so we go through them quite quickly anyhow. If there's an item limit on whatever she's buying, she'll buy as much as the limit permits, checkout, load up the stuff in her car, and then return back to the store to buy more--it's absolutely ridiculous.
Recently my mom found a decent deal on cereal in the Rite Aid ad several weeks ago. From what I remember it was $2.50/box on Honey Bunches of Oats with ____ or Grape Nuts. Luckily, my mom found a coupon she recently clipped for fifty cents off whatever cereal, so she immediately went to Rite Aid to take advantage of the deal. My mom's shopping patterns are quite irregular, as she simply goes when she feels like it; thus I'm always unaware when she goes and I'm unable to tell her what to buy or know what store she is at since she is too technologically inept to want to carry a cellphone on her. One could say she's a shopping ninja. She stealthily leaves the house and returns unnoticed with a minivan full of food.
One thing to keep in mind is that my mom has never eaten cereal in her entire life. She has probably tasted a few before, but she will never go out of her way and pour a bowl for herself as a meal. Her rationale for buying cereal is her false hope of the rest of the family eating it. Above I mentioned that she had a choice between Honey Bunches or Grape Nuts. My mom has bought Honey Bunches before and I have told her on several occasions that it's pretty damn good. I have never had Grape Nuts in my life and simply by looking at its box, it doesn't look very appetizing either. So which cereal would one think she'd get? Just take a guess...
Right. Six boxes of Grape Nuts (only 5 shown) Peachy. Just peachy. And I'm not talking about Honey Bunches with Peaches (which is awesome I might add). I would have made a Grape Nuts fort, but that would require more Grape Nuts boxes (I'll pass thank you very much)
So why did my mom buy Grape Nuts instead? Purely because of unit pricing. The Honey Oats box was 14oz. while the Grape Nuts box was a surprising 24oz. At a whopping 24 oz. my mom thought it was a steal.
If anyone does any regular grocery shopping, many manufacturers have progressively reduced the amount of whatever they're selling, but the prices have stayed the same. Basically, you're getting ripped off; do some unit price comparison shopping to avoid getting duped. Some obvious culprits I have noticed over time include: soft drink companies (16.9 oz. bottles? Where's my 20 oz?), laundry detergent/other various soaps (ultra concentrated? people are still unaware that you don't have to use THAT much detergent to get your clothes clean), and lastly yet related to this post--cereal.
It really upsets me to see companies undermine the general public. Although it may be an extreme idea, borrowed from the Bill of Rights, we should have a right to:
An adequate amount of cereal at a reasonable price.
Enough of the same sized cereal boxes with less cereal in them; it frustrates me to open a box of cereal and see that the bag inside only utilizes 3/4 of the box and that the cereal only utilizes 3/4 of the bag. What wasteful packaging. I remember back in the day eating cereal with boxes of at least 18oz for a normal sized box. Nowadays you're lucky if you can find any normal sized box of cereal with more than 14oz unless you're going to Costco or Sam's Club for their normal-sized box.
Now that I've gotten some background information and random digressions out of the way, I can finally discuss the entire purpose of this rant: Grape Nuts. Given that my mom had bought six boxes of it and at the time there was only expired/stale cereal left in the house, I gave it a try. Not to disappoint all of the people out there that may love their Grape Nuts cereal, I'm going to be as fair as possible with my assessment of it--it sucks, real bad.
I finally realized why I had never approached this cereal ever; it's so extremely crappy that it has been my misfortune to have ever let those brown...things...to go through my digestive system. My initial reaction when I ate it was that it tasted like really bad, uncooked oatmeal. The cereal would soak up nearly all the milk that I poured into it within 2-3 minutes and would look like mush. Eating it wasn't very fun. Realizing that there are plenty of hungry people in countries where famine is an issue, I still managed to finish it. I didn't enjoy it to say the least.
A few other problems I have with the cereal that I'd like to address involve its name and the way it has been advertised. Err, Grape-Nuts? I'm probably acting a little to pretentious about the situation, but where are the grapes and nuts? Okay, it kinda tastes like almonds, ish, but I still can't taste any grapes. I guess it's that kind of branding where the name is completely unrelated to the product; like say, Life, Total, or Special K. Those cereals need to have some deep metaphorical meaning to it; they're too high-brow for literal translation cereals like Cookie Crisp, or Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
I'm not exactly sure how Grape-Nuts was advertised back in the day, but currently Grape-Nuts boxes have this nice little spoonful of their pretty cereal with some blueberries and raspberries. Taking into account the various cereals that incorporate fruit into their mix (Honey Oats, Raisin Bran, Special K), wouldn't one assume that there would be some dried fruit with it; perhaps grapes (or I guess raisins). Not Grape-Nuts. All you're going to get are those brown clusters that resemble bits of dog food. Whenever I see boxes like these I seem to laugh at their marketing scheme:
"Hey our cereal isn't that good by itself, so we're going to add some awesome fruits in to make it somewhat remotely appetizing."
Right.
How many people actually add fresh fruit to their cereal? I add a couple slices of banana to my cereal every now and then, but when are blueberries and raspberries common enough to put in your cereal on a daily basis? Bananas are fairly common/cheap and are around all-year long. As far as I know, I don't live in a location where blueberries and raspberries are native and they certainly aren't cheap in comparison to bananas. Overall, it's simply false advertising regardless of how pretty the food art may be.
Great cereals need not extra supplementary fruit.
Alright, maybe I have been a little too harsh. Supposedly Grape Nuts are good for you because it is whole grain and will promote a good heart and blah blah blah. According to Wikipedia, it has been around since its development in 1897 and has been used as jungle rations for U.S and Allied forces prior to WWII as well as expedition groups in the 1920s and 30s. Fair enough. It has it's practical uses, but beyond that, whoever likes this cereal or has developed a liking for this cereal needs to enlighten me on this.
Perhaps I have been spoiled with my cereals. I grew up eating mostly Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Captain Crunch with crunch berries. I witnessed the plethora of cereal ads on Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network brainwashing me to always stop some rabbit from eating my Trix, to always follow my nose to find a box of Froot Loops, and to catch that damned Lucky and his Lucky Charms. They were all colorful, sugar-induced cereals which probably didn't provide any nutritional benefit. It's no wonder that a cereal like Grape-Nuts didn't appeal to me in the first place: it's too health-oriented, it needs fancy fruit I can't get a hold of most of the time, and most imporantly they're not GRRRREEEAAT!!! Nowadays I've moved on from those cereals for the most part and have focused on eating healthier cereals like Special K or Wheaties. Considering the changes in my cereal choices, wouldn't Grape-Nuts be a good third option?
Survey says: Probably not. It's just not good at all. It really makes my gag reflex act up a bit. I'm surprised that this cereal has been around for so long despite it not being that good at all. Perhaps there's some secret society of Grape-Nuts fanatics ready to smite me after they read this. All I know is is that I have five more boxes of Grape-Nuts left, and I am willing to let someone else eat it.
For those who actually like Grape-Nuts and now hate me, that means more Grape-Nuts for you...Enjoy.
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