On Generic Crunchberries

It probably comes as no surprise to anyone that my favorite breakfast cereals are high in sugar and low in anything like healthy secondary ingredients. "It's made of cardboard derivatives and its primary binding agent is a type of industrial adhesive used primarily by the aerospace community, you say? But it's colorful and has an irresistible high fructose sugary glaze on it!" I respond blithely as I spoon another heaping scoop of now entirely soggy, color smeared near-gruel from my bowl into my mouth. And one of my favorites has always been Cap'n Crunch.

But Cap'n Crunch is expensive. What isn't expensive is the Kroger knockoff of Crunchberries (my second favorite of the Cap'n line--I was always a bit of a purist as a kid, but I've grown to appreciate the subtle flavor nuances that red, blue, green, and purple orbs can lend to a spoonful of Crunch now that I'm older and my tastes have matured) that comes in a bag. The bag holds something like a bushel of cereal and sells for the same price as the real stuff, and it really isn't that bad (though it does need to soak for a bit because, straight out of the bag, the stuff is so crunchy that it will readily and consistently lacerate my mouth with each chew).

Because I know that I have terrible eating preferences, I've tried desperately over the last coming up on two years to instill in Gabe an appreciation of better, healthier foods--and I've done this by almost completely denying him anything with high fructose corn syrup in it--and, actually, processed sugars in general. For the first year and a half, it worked like a charm. He ate fresh fruit and veg and would stuff just about anything we put in front of him into his mouth cheerfully. But then he learned that there are tasty foods out there. I'm not sure how it happened, but it did. I blame Libby and Nana and Poppa, but only because I can without the slightest little iota of proof. Over the last six months, our steady stream of healthy, nourishing foods has been infiltrated by sweet things that we know he will eat. I'm not proud of it, but sometimes it's the only way we can get him to eat anything, and we figure something is better than nothing.

Yesterday for breakfast, Gabe discovered generic Crunchberries. He's always been a fan of dry cereal, but we'd tried to give him Cheerios or other options whose claims to be a "healthy part of this balanced breakfast" didn't have to include another source of "grains" in the picture (along with every other food group) to make the claim legit. But over the last few months he has grown to all but reject these good-for-you cereals when offered, and we can only get him to eat the sweet cereals. Yesterday, I took this to its logical next level, I gave him a sweet cereal that included color combinations that could not be found in nature (they should advertise it as containing "The great taste of Blue!" because, really, what flavor can it be that represents a natural food except blueberries, and nobody with taste buds likes blueberry flavored cereals).

I made him a small bowl of the cereal (dry still because he doesn't command a spoon well enough to eat milked cereal) and within five minutes he had eaten every one of the "berries" in the bowl. He'd eaten only one of the little yellow Cap'n Crunch-like biscuits and found it not suitable for his palate. He brought me the bowl and said, "More!" So we went into the kitchen and I pulled out the bag and we proceeded to fill the bowl with nothing but the berries. And he ate that entire bowl.

This morning, I discovered a most unexpected side effect of a breakfast made up entirely of Crunchberries. His pooh was the most disarming shade of green I have ever seen come out of an omnivore. It was very nearly vibrant and lush--as though it was made from grazing in a dewy stand of spring grass in a secluded meadow in some heavenly glade. It put me quite off my game this morning.

So, obviously, this morning, after he ate his leftover pancake from last night but still wanted something else to eat, I decided to conduct a little experiment. Instead of giving him a bowl filled with a variety of the berries, I picked out only the purple ones. If the after-product tomorrow morning looks like he ate a muppet, I'll be sure to let everyone know.