Quaker's Honey Graham Oh's -- the Self-Hating Cereal

As I found out this week, Quaker's Honey Graham Oh's (Good Things In The Middle! TM) are high in fibre, low in fat and low in self-esteem.

If you've never tried them, Quaker's Honey Graham Oh's are a breakfast cereal in the classic hoop shape but with additional little bits of wheat cracker, rice and honey filling the hole in the middle. Nothing wrong with that at all, of course. I bought a box this week and was quite enjoying them. Until, that is, I discovered that Quaker's Honey Graham Oh's despise themselves for ever being hoop-shaped in the first place.

I was alerted to this by the blurb on the back of the box, which had the usual dull stuff about the cereal's multi-grain composition and how many types of Vitamin B etc it contained. But then, unprompted, it went on to say, So why eat a cereal with nothing in the middle when there's so many good things in the middle of Honey Graham Oh's?

Well, why indeed? I mean, what kind of moron would do that? You'd only be singling yourself out as the type of doofus who pays NT$135 (US$4.50) for a 340g box of a cereal for which a key component is nutrient-free air! You idiot! Why would you do that? Why? You think you can get your RDA of riboflavin out of thin air, you cretin? Well let me tell you -- you can't!

Now this rather aggressive pushing of Quaker's Honey Graham Oh's's main selling point would be easier to accept were it not that Quaker's Honey Graham Oh's quite clearly evolved from the hoop form themselves and thus might be expected to treat their origins with greater respect. But yet instead of ice-cold milk, it is unbridled scorn that they pour on their humble progenitor.

We could dismiss this as analagous to the posturing of high school kids trying to get into the cool set by slagging off the gang they used to hang around with. "Hole in the middle? That's just stupid. Glad I stopped hanging with that bunch of losers!"

But I fear it may be worse, more deep-seated. An inferiority complex leading to a rejection of one's basic identity. In other words, a Self-Hating Cereal.

Oh, I don't doubt that Quaker's Honey Graham Oh's view themselves as the victim in all of this. I picture Quaker's Honey Graham Oh's appearing on Oprah to declare tearfully, "I felt so inadequate, like something was missing. I realized there was a hole in my life. And I needed to fill that hole."

If that is the case then, Quaker's Honey Graham Oh's, you have my pity. But not my respect. Nor my continued custom. For how can such a cereal fill me up when it betrays such a gaping void in its own being? When it possesses every kind of fibre except moral? Herein lies the paradox -- it is only when you embrace your hole that you will be made complete. Once you accept your inner hole, you will realize that what sticks to others merely whistles through your hollow middle.

It is baffling. How can Quaker's Honey Graham Oh's turn their back on a community containing some of the most charismatic cereals the world has ever known? I call on Froot Loops, Wheetos, Lucky Charms -- let all the O-shaped cereals rise as one and condemn this ap-O-stasy.

I ask you -- would Cheerios ever show such disdain for their rich and crunchy heritage? I think not!