Wednesday, March 09, 2011

new cereal study

There's a new study out stating that children report liking a cereal better if it has a cartoon character on the box. Oddly, a lot of the online sources treat that like it's a huge fail, like it's all "LOOK HOW THEY BRAINWASH KIDS." I see how it could be a way to promote healthful cereal: slap a fun character on the box!

(And yes, I am one of those tiresome people who still makes the healthful/healthy distinction: food is healthful if it makes you healthy. But food cannot be healthy, unless you're talking about the plant or animal that it was produced from and its state-of-health before it became food)

In fact, I think they need to repeat this study with the healthful cereals that many adults buy. They could have Bugs Bunny's Bran Bits, and SpongeBob Seaweed Crunch (now with more crab chitin!). In fact, I think they must try that.

I know I would enjoy the wholegrain cereals I eat more if they had a funny cartoon character on the box. (And I'd enjoy them even more with a fun prize inside. Except few "kids'" cereals even do that any more. I think the last "prize" I saw was a coupon for a free educational smart-phone app being promoted as a fun prize . ("I say it's spinach, and to hell with it")

Hm. Maybe I could try making my own cartoon characters and taping them on the cereal boxes to see if I were any cheerier at 6:30 am gulping down my bowl of Cheerios or low-fat, low-sugar granola.

I could even laminate them for re-use.

HIPSTER-CRUNCH-Ingredients-you-wouldnt-know-what-any-of-them-were

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bento boxes

This is something that makes me happy these days at lunch. I bought these partly in desperation - the cloth lunch-sack I had been using wasn't really that washable (you couldn't throw it into the machine, and surface-washing just didn't fix it) and it had gotten ickily stained from yogurt runoff. The nice thing about the bento boxes is that they're all washable, so no stains. I find that the square ones (with Tupperware like lids) are a lot better for stuff that is semi-liquidy like yogurt because they are less prone to leak. I ordered a couple of these from Superbuzzy, but the square ones came directly from Artemis (the company that apparently licenses these characters). Yes, they are juvenile themed. But they work so nicely, and they satisfy my need to keep separate food separate. And they're good for portion-control: the littlest box is just right for a single serving of fruit-and-nut trail mix, the second-smallest box holds the right amount of yogurt, I can just pop two small cookies into half of the heart-shaped box. I don't carry all of them every day, just grab the ones that I need for the foods I'm taking.

Part of the reason I like them is the super-earnest, not-quite-native-speaker English phrases on the boxes. ("Tea full of love just for you")

And you know what: plain lowfat yogurt DOES taste better eaten out of a little square box with an elephant on the lid, than it did eaten out of a plain plastic "Ball" freezer container.

I do need to work out some way to either link them all together with elastics, or make a (washable!) bag that I can carry all of them in - I think one of my Aranzi Aronzo books has instructions on making a drawstring bag to carry bento boxes in.

I also have a new-ish Hello Kitty Sigg bottle to carry my water in.

Perhaps this is my form of a midlife crisis: beginning to carry juvenile-themed lunch kits and not really caring what anyone thinks. If so, it's about par for the course for other life-transitions for me: weird, and not quite like other people's.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Where did I see a tutorial on how to sew a drawstring bag?
ah. here.

Ellen said...

My almost-adult daughters had/have bento boxes for their lunches. Theirs came with elastic straps to hold them together but I think the bag idea is much better.

I prefer, however, that they bring them home ASAP instead of collecting all the little boxes at the bottom of their lockers! Yucky.

Big Alice said...

That's an interesting study. I think you have a good point about Sponge-Bob Whole Grain Crunch-os :)

It reminds me about a book I read about the history of Sesame Street. I had no idea that the genesis for SS was to use commercial-like video bits to teach kids. One of the creators noticed that the parents were bemoaning that their 3-year old had memorized so many commercials, and she thought, hey, why not use that to TEACH them something?