Honey Nut Insanity
12.vii.04

I've been getting cross a lot recently; it's all part of growing up into a big, strong crotchety old git. It's also rather comforting. Never does one feel so absolutely sure of oneself than when denouncing others in a vitriolic, unsubstantiated tirade of thoughtless kneejerk reaction. Today the victim is Nestle Cheerios. As if their simply being made by Nestle was not sufficient reason to become incensed, I have managed to take issue with the nutrition propaganda on the back. You know the bit, it's put there so you've got something to read while you shovel the refried cardboard (or whatever it is) into your system, shocking your metabolism into remission just in time to exhaust you completely before your inevitable sprint for the bus. Anyway, due to its early-morning audience, one expects such parts of the box to be (a) low-brow and simple and (b) unmemorable, thereby ensuring a stress-free, untaxing experience that can be slipped through in neutral morning after morning without fear of terminal boredom or mental exhaustion. I am therefore tempted to go easy on this little treat. But I won't.

The basic premise is thus: Most people find it difficult to concentrate over a period of time - yeah, right; especially at this time in the morning, bozo. Keep it short. Especially those with exams and tests. No wonder we all under-perform then. What a load of crap! Everyone knows that it only feels like you're underperforming at exam time because it's the only time of the year one is required to perform at all. Well now, brown cow? Research carried out by CDR and Reading Scientific Services confirms that eating Cheerios and Shreddies can actually help your concentration.

There's some other crap about slow-release carbohydrate energy but that's the bit that you're supposed to forget so you can read it again tomorrow and be amazed a second, third, fiftieth time. Anyway, then there is the following graph. Brace yourself, it's a real corker.

I don't just have issues with this graph, I have bin-liners full of complaint letters. First of all, why does everything to do with education have to be written in chalk? Even when I was at school, fifty-odd years ago, they all had whiteboards! Haven't the advertisers heard of Stanley Milgram? Ingrained stereotypes of authority can kill people! And who is this pupil, anyway? She looks old enough to be doing a Masters.. she's certainly not dressed either in uniform or snappy teenage fashion; that shapeless BROWN sweater belongs on the back rail at the British Heart Foundation shop. And why, if she's got a shoulder bag, are her files in her other hand?? What's she going to high-five hippies in the canteen with? Her teeth?

But I digress; however inappropriate a twenty year-old may look on a kiddies' cereal box it's nothing compared to the ludicrous graph in front of which she is positioned. First of all, every condition shows a decline in concentration overall - with 8am as the benchmark! I can't concentrate on walking at 8am! Downhill from that is comatose!! And what is this poisonous rubbish that causes such appalling degradation of intellectual activity? First up, a glucose drink! The breakfast of champions! Who hasn't left the house of a morning, pausing only to swallow down a couple of cans of Tango or Lucozade? I'm reminded of Bill Bryson's "Rated FIRST against the Ford El Crappo for safety!" diatribe on advertising - if a glucose drink is the only competition then Cheerios can't be doing too well against anything more sensible. But wait! Sugary energy drinks aren't the only competition! The other condition is.. no breakfast! Which actually beats Cheerios in the first half hour! Clearly, the subjects were still mulling over the pseudo-scientific crap they'd just read on the Cheerios box and couldn't concentrate on.. whatever it was they were given. In the end, of course Cheerios come out on top but it hardly tells you anything you didn't know before - as the only solid food in the experiment you might equally read the result as,

Cheerios - better for you than starvation

which is hardly the best ad slogan I've ever read. Frankly, this kind of arse really gets my goat, not least because you could quite easily chalk up another graph along the same lines, only this time with pints of Red Bull and Vodka pitted against starvation and cigarettes. I have it on good authority that nicotine enhances short-term synaptic formation ('learning' to you and me) and that taurine is.. well.. probably also good for you. In the short term.



Frankly, I prefer my graph. At least it's funny.

• AV What's even funnier is that honey and nuts (almonds in this case) that are used in the "Cheerios" are known natural ingredients to help make you sleepy. Seriously! It's from the high amount of tryptophan in it...
  
  
  
• John R. You are awesome!
• C Check the units on the vertical scale.
  
  Oh no, my reaction time is delayed by just over one tenth of a second. I'm going to fail Floriculture!
• -Cliff Spot On!
  
  
  Look what's plotted on the ordinate of that silly graph -- "Delay in Reaction Time (MSecs)" The girl has zero milliseconds of delay at 8AM? And is a tenth of a second delay significant?
  
  Does "delay in reaction time" have anything to do with "Power of concentration"?
• RW Zero ms delay in reaction time? ZERO DELAY?! What the fuck? Are researchers working on the assumption that Cheerios' target audience is Neo?
  
  They may as well make the chart "Ability to catch a bullet".
  
  
  8AM, semi-comatose: Subject breaks sound barrier; catches bullet; cooks eggs all at once.
  
  10AM, awake: Subject hit. New subject introduced.
• Man On Pink Corner 0 ms reaction time = the girl is Killcreek?
• Ben Ha!
  
  Reminds me of an old Dave Barry Rant.
  
  "Part of this complete breakfast?" Aren't you just saying "on the same table as this complete breakfast," and couldn't the same be said for a dead rat?
  
  
  (found you via boing boing)
• lobo 0ms reaction time sounds reasonable. I mean, when my alarm clock goes of, I punch it through the wall before the first sound wave hits my ear.
• Mike I hate this kind of pseudoscience, too, but at least pick on the right things, guys. A reasonable interpretation of the vertical axis is that they are using reaction time at 8am as the baseline. Further measurements are then marked as the *delay* in reaction time from that baseline. So 0 msec delay from the baseline is perfectly correct. They are not charting reaction time, they are charting *delay* in reaction time. But perhaps you had a bowl of Cheerios before writing your comments...
  
  But more in line with Carl's complaint, I would love to see the chart comparing Cheerios to, say, a piece of fruit! Or, god forbid, an egg! Those might actually show better results than anything on the chart.
  
  And who said reaction time is the best measure of the "power of concentration" anyway? And what were the subjects reacting to? Maybe they should actually compare the result data directly, i.e.test scores, instead of trying to infer it from something else with an unproven correlation.
• Watson Hmm......I might prefer the starvation option, actually
• Barnegat Blummis IV I won a pig
  
  I two a pig
  I three a pig
  etc
  
  Nov shmoz ka pop.
  Cortisol levels aren't being tracked. Nor is norepinephrine, endorphins, etc. What a muckup!
  
  God save the Queen. All others pay cash.
• Bollocks Uber Alles Can you think of words which rhyme with
  
  Silver?
  Flesticle?
  Fluterus?
  
  or an antonym for
  
  
  Doctor?
  George W. Bush?
  
  My nuts hurt on Tuesdays.
• Brian As a grumpy old git as well, I will tell you I have never, and never will eat this American imported crap.
  
  Whats wrong with a good old helping of porridge and a spoon of raw cod liver oil for breakfast, plus a good clout around the ear and off to school, never did me any bloody harm.
  
  I blame the tree huggers and the loony left politically correct idiots for destroying all things British.
  Bah Humbug............
• Duh.. Or maybe you should take it for what it is. Half a joke?
• Beastlie Cheerios are made by General Mills in the states. Does your critique still hold up?
• D. Scott If it ain't boiled or broiled, it's not British.
  
  
  Don't eat the fucking thing.
  
  Bollocks to it all.
  
  I say this is the last straw. time for Blair to get his ass in gear and lets take the american colonies back.
• mick That'd be "arse" surely?
• Dave What's even worse is that their "Honey Nut Cheerios" contain more sugar than
  honey, a sure way to turn the student
  
  into an Attention Deficit Disorder sufferer.
  
  See
  http://www.bee-quick.com/wall/f_honey_nut_cheerios1.html
• Anders Being an info-addict I actually found the original paper where the data was published. Despite the grave aesthetic offence of the chart it represents the real data (which I have a nagging suspicion is biased).
  
  http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2007/02/shredding_the_shreddies.html
  
  Zero reaction time is not Neo, but simply zero decline from the baseline.
• dsp ummm, that is actually Msec, a capital m is a mega, not a milli, so her reaction time with cheerios at 11:30 is roughly 2 years. yeah.
• Cypher Uh, I'm actually pretty sure "Delay in Reation TIme" means somthing along the line of "extra time _over_ basline reation time". So all the 0 delay in reation time means that its just your normal reaction time, whatever that my be.
• Alejandro Drying tears of laughter after reading your blog!
  
  Cheers!
  
• zandar what the f*** is a glucose drink? Do you get those at a hospital?
  
  Agreed, even a piece of bacon would probably produce better results that a bowl of cheerios. It's sugar that's the problem. In fact, what marginal difference there is between the cheerios and an IV drip of glucose (?), or a soda pop, is the sheer amount of sugar. More sugar, the more dippy your reaction profile will be, and the harder it crashes at the end. Eat something high in protein- yes, even something fatty like bacon- you'll be much better off.
  
  But hey, that dig about the chalkboard- When I was a kid our boards were actually made of slate- Black slate, natch. And I went to grade school less then fifty years ago, too.
• nina yeah I remember seeing this ona ceral box and it just confused be.. but I didnt look into it much being as it was 6am or what have you. marketing is balls, huh?
• mary sorry bout that ... i'm back now
  
  had to go get me a bowl of cheerios
  
  sure this isn't some type of viral marketing?
• Bundoflep Vuntz I hed a kendy store
  
  Beezniss vas so bed
  I esked mine vife vat to do
  End dis is vat she said:
  Take yerself some kerosene
  Pour it on de floor
  Take a metch
  Take a scretch
  No more Kendy Store! Hey!
• Bill What II want to know is, why are all the husbands in the Cheerio's Commercials total morons? One husband says stupid things about hiw wife looks. Boy, she was mean looking. Now, the new commerical shows a husband that can't get his list of chores done, because his wife is constantly over his shoulder, telling him he must be an idiot for thinking he could do all his chores. Who writes thie crap? University age girsl?
  
• Bill Moore Straight up Cheerio's are good for you compared to pretty much any other processed grain cereal. All the others (like honeynut) are loaded with sugar. Of course, whole foods are better (oatmeal). Or, just add fruit and bit of peanut butter to your Cheerio's and skim milk.. that evens out the GI hit and you're actually eating something good for you
• Juliewho I've been noticing for the past two years when I wake up in the middle of the night and have a bowl of Cheerios I sleep so soundly for the next three hours. Then.... Thinking about this, during starvation mode, I search the Internet for 'what ingredients in Cheerios makes you sleepy?', and I came across your article and the comments that followed. I found myself very entertained.
  How can I follow you? And Do you have a blog?

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