Grown-up taste buds

Pretty much, every weekday morning, and some weekends, I start my day off with bowl of cereal.  My favorites are Quaker’s Oatmeal Squares, Kellogg’s Frosted Mini-Wheats, and Kellogg’s Special K, in that particular order.  But being the unpicky, frugal consumer that I am, I typically only indulge in those, whenever they’re on sale, and I can hoard them for brief periods of time.  So for the most part, I tend to stick with whatever’s on sale, which can range from anywhere from random flakes with various maple or honey flavors, or raisin brans, since supposedly we can all always be better off with more fiber in our diets.

Recently, I picked up a box of Post’s Golden Crisp.  I loved this cereal as a kid, and seeing it on sale, I couldn’t resist indulging in a childhood favorite again.  This morning, I poured myself a bowl, and while standing outside with the dogs eating this cereal, something felt different.  Either my taste buds have evolved, or Post has dumped an ungodly amount of sugar into Golden Crisp these days.  I’m fairly sure it’s not the latter, but the bottom line is that the cereal was still okay, but it admittedly, tickled my teeth in only the way that something with way too much sugar can.  I was imagining more puffy puffs of cereal, and a more subtle sweetness; perhaps I am mistaking it for Kellogg’s equivalent Smacks, but after I finished the bowl of cereal, I kind of felt guilty, in that I wish I didn’t just eat that kind of way.  And to be honest, I don’t think I’d want to eat the rest of this box; I think I may mix it into another box of cereal, at least to off-set some of the gratuitous sweetness or something.

As kids, we’re conditioned to want to inhale these sugary, gimmicky cereals, but apparently as I’m coming to realizations of my own, getting yet another year closer to 30, I have a bigger concern over my dietary habits.  This aging shit sucks, yo.