Yesterday I was minding my own business when I received a text message from Shirley regarding the nutritional value of breakfast cereal.  As I suspected, the article basically laid out a case that a bag of sugar has more nutritional value than breakfast cereal.  I thought to my self who are these Fascists that are trying to do away with breakfast cereal?  Right behind, hot dogs, apple pie, and blow jobs its pretty much everything America cares about, at least American males.  Off the top of my head I am not sure how many billions the cereal industry brings in every year, but I will say this, whatever it brings in in dollars it also brings about an equal amount of worthless cereal milk.  There is nothing worse than being forced to drink cereal milk, if you want to truly torture someone to the point of breaking, put them on a steady diet of cereal milk and Ellen, there is no human who won’t crack when faced with sugary milk and continual jokes from a middle aged white woman who can’t dance and makes Amy Schumer look like the white fat female version of Dave Chapelle.  (I love vagina jokes by the way, especially from someone whose vagina probably smells like a lunchable that has been left  in the  trunk of someone’s car in the middle of the desert for weeks)

The funny thing about this whole cereal article is the fact that I have pretty much known all along there is no way that shit can be good for you, but does it have to be?  Breakfast: the most important meal of the day.  The options for breakfast are shit, if it were the most important meal of the day wouldn’t we be coming up with some better options than something you can put in a box and they don’t even bother putting an expiration date on it for two reasons: 1. You will either eat it or throw it out to make room for other cereal your kid claims to want before it comes even close to expiring. 2.  Someone will inevitably leave the bag open causing it to go stale so there is no need for an expiration date.  3.  I know I said there were only two reasons, but the third reason is you could pull a box of life from an eighties time capsule, pour some milk on it, and it would be perfectly edible and wouldn’t bring about any catastrophic stomach issues.  Granted, you can go the route of eggs, bacon, or something more “healthy” which I will get to momentarily, but who has time to put a fully cooked breakfast meal together in three minutes.  Yes, three minutes, that’s the amount of time available each morning at the Jansma household for breakfast.

Here is how it usually goes at the Jansma household:

3:00 am: one or both of the kids come into our room and ask to get into bed with us.  I think to myself “hell no” but realize they will likely cry and carry on dramatically increasing the likelihood I won’t fall immediately back to sleep, so I let them climb on board.  Typically I make some veiled threat about putting a lock on their door if they continue to do this, but they know my threats are as empty as Donald Trump’s soul and they also know I don’t have the mechanical capabilities to switch out the door handles they currently have for ones with locks.

3:34 am: Typically I would go into the guest bedroom and sleep the rest of the night because Todd, Ted, Shirley, and Allie (our 10 year old Boston Terrier) had forced me to the edge of the bed and I was sick of fighting to get additional space so  I wouldn’t fall to the floor.  Now Aiden and Parker have bunk beds and the bottom bunk is quite comfortable so that is my new fortress of solitude when our bedroom is over run by Tod and Ted.

6:30 am:  I am typically playing basketball at this point, but if I didn’t make it out of bed this is when Shirley’s annoying apple phone alarm goes off.  She hits snooze.

6:38:  She hits snooze again.

6:46: She hits snooze again until she makes her way out of bed around 7.  The alarm has no impact on the ability of Tod and Ted to carry on sleeping and we are forced to drag them out of bed.  Cool thing is, on the weekends they get up way before 7 and bug the shit out of us.  Kids are great.

7:12 Tod gets on the crapper and takes his customary morning shit.  He is not a real big fan of wiping his own butt and has trained his body to avoid pooping at school.  He dumps in the morning and before he takes a shower at night.  I am somewhat ashamed that he can’t (won’t) wipe his own but, but my hat is off to his regularity.

7:28 After yelling at the kids for a solid twenty minutes they have finally made their way down stairs.  It hasn’t been without conflict with Ted thumbing his nose at two shirts, three pairs of shorts, and a pair of socks.  While hearing “wipe my butt dad” isn’t music to my ears, at least Tod doesn’t complain about the clothes I pick out for him.

7:29  “What do you guys want for breakfast?”  “what is there?”  “The same thing there was yesterday!”  I then list off every cereal we have in the cupboard and wait for them to make up their minds.

7:42 “Holy shit! what happened to the last 13 minutes, we are going to be late, really late. Get in the car NOW!”

Granted, if the Jansma family had their shit together we probably could fix some sort of “healthy” meal for our kids every morning.  Likewise, I am sure in her mind Shirley thought, wow, this article has a valid point, we really are doing our kids a disservice in more than just the areas of discipline and structure, they are going to turn into fat bastards if they keep eating breakfast cereal.  However, I will give you one guess as to what they ate this morning:  Breakfast Cereal.

The author of the article I mentioned at the outset of my post had this to say as what Americans should look to as alternatives to breakfast cereal:

What does she recommend for breakfast? Steel-cut oats, not cooked but rather soaked overnight with a dash of vinegar. I add whole-fat Greek yogurt and some nuts if I have them — it’s a satisfying small dish. Beans are great too. I had a delicious dish of lentils and a small amount of basmati rice, a preparation called kitchari, at the new vegetarian restaurant abcV in Manhattan, the other morning, and my companion had congee made with black rice and millet, in a seaweed and mushroom broth. Excellent breakfasts. An egg and some cheese are also a nourishing and satisfying way to begin the day.

There is nothing better to kick start your day than steel cut oats with a dash of vinegar.  How would anyone even think to put vinegar on anything in the morning?  Hey Steve, you know what this could really use to make it taste better?  Vinegar.  How bad does something have to taste for vinegar to make it taste better?  What kind of sadist is this women.  Beans for breakfast?  Typically I don’t like to get too terribly reactionary, but anyone who eats beans for breakfast isn’t part of my America.  I always question people who eat grapefruit for breakfast, but to opt for black rice and millet (I don’t even know what that is, but it sounds terrible) that is really doubling down to make your breakfast taste like a dog’s butthole.

Unfortunately, there is an all out war on sugar.  It isn’t just relegated to breakfast cereal.  You can’t go down an internet rabbit hole without running into some article about how terrible sugar is for you.  Guess what, it probably should matter to me, but it doesn’t.  If sugar is knocking years off my life, they are going to be the shitty years from like 85 to 90 where you poop your pants and can’t even remember your own name, in all honesty if those years get knocked off, sugar is doing me a favor.  THANK YOU SUGAR!   If something tastes good there is a 99.9 % chance it’s bad for you and it has sugar in it.  If something tastes awful, it’s probably good for you.  Not sure why God made it this way, my guess would be because Eve screwed the pooch, but it definitely hasn’t deterred me from taking opportunities to enjoy the sweeter things in life.

But back to the breakfast cereal thing as I close this out, when I was a kid I ate shit tons of breakfast cereal.  And to my mom’s credit, she initially tried to get me to drink cereal milk, but when I refused we either dumped it in the sink or the toilet.  Also to her credit, even though she is Dutch and has a Tupperware coupon box the size of glove box, she never skimped on cereal. It was always name brand.  I can’t imagine eating off brand cereal, if name brand cereal is bad for you, off brand cereal probably makes your testicles fall off.  That being said, having lived a child hood full of breakfast cereal and very few restraints on sugar consumption, I’m still awesome.  That’s right,  I run, I water ski, and I’m great in bed (at least I think so, and that’s all that really matters). My last physical my blood work came back and they though I was genetically engineered it was so phenomenal.  My point is, science may say this stuff is bad for you, but I’m doing fine (I will probably get diagnosed with diabetes tomorrow as pay back for my bold statements) but as long as you only let your kids eat breakfast cereal for one meal a day, ice cream once a day, and sugary snacks only after school, they should turn out just like me, but probably not quite as awesome.