Originally published by The Clifton Courier, March 3, 2021

I think I’m on the verge of a breakfast-based philosophical epiphany. 

I was eating breakfast the other day and rather than going for my regular spinach and eggs combo, I had myself a bowl of cereal. The type of cereal is integral to this little rant I’m about to unleash on you, but I don’t want to go ahead and name brands.

I don’t want to make it look like I’ve been bought off by Big Bran to say nice things about this type of cereal. I also don’t want to be accused of being paid off by this particular cereal’s competitors to say bad things about it, even though I must say it would bring my great joy to think of rival cereal makers laying aside their differences to join forces and form a secret cereal cartel to take down the big guy via advertorial disguised as trivial opinion pieces in regional independent newspapers. That would be most amusing (and, just in case the editor – who I like to refer to as the TEDitor because I’m clearly hilarious – is reading this, I’d tell them to book an ad instead).

So, I’ll just say that I’m referring to a cereal that comprises of bran flakes and dried grapes. 

Now, I love dried grapes or, as they’re more commonly known as, sultanas. I have a long history of adding them to things that others may raise an eyebrow at. Cornflakes. Rice Bubbles. Coco Pops. All of these cereals are greatly improved taste-wise by a handful of sultanas. And while I sometimes poke fun at my mother’s early 90s version of “stir fry” – being beef mince with grated carrot and zucchini severed on a bed of Magi two-minute chicken noodles – I have to tell you that the sultanas she added this concoction really lifted the whole dish. In more recent times, I’ve been known to add sultanas to rices dishes and drool over a sultana-studded couscous.

I love sultanas.

And I particularly love the sultanas in this type of cereal. They just taste so good. I’m not sure exactly why, but I like to imagine it’s because they’ve been roughed up and laced with bran in the cereal-mixing process, rather than some kind of artificial chemical-based procedure.

So when I don’t get enough of them, I’m disappointed. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m partial to a bit of bran on its own – because I’m just that exciting of a person – but the addition of sultanas to the mix really makes those fibre flakes sing. I don’t want to be rude to bran, but it is rather bland. It’s boring. And while we all know that bran is a large part of the cereal, I don’t think nearly as many people would be eating it if it weren’t for the sultanas.

But you can have too many sultanas, I’ve learned. 

You start off being like “oh boy oh boy, look at all them sweet, sweet sultanas in my bowl, it’s my lucky day”. But after the first few mouthfuls, it’s too sweet. It’s sickly. It’s too gunge-y in your gob. You begin to miss – nay, yearn for – the bran.

Like the Spice Girls famously sung, too much of something is bad enough. And when you’ve got like five sultanas to spoonful of bran, it’s not great. Of course, you’ve got to have a bit of perspective – if the worst thing that happens to you all day is that you had too many sultanas in your bran, you’re going alright. But it makes for an unpleasant bowl.

It’s just like when you don’t get enough sultanas because, as the Spice Girls also sung, too much of nothing is just as tough. And this often happens within those first few bowls from a fresh box. You get mostly bran as the sultanas are cruelly taken by gravity to the bottom of the box. Maybe you’ll get a couple of sultanas here and there, but it’s not nearly enough. You feel ripped off. You feel like you have to start rationing sultanas, strategically selecting them for each spoonful. You can’t just blindly dig in your spoon without paying attention because you might eat your entire allocation of sultanas in one mouthful and be doomed to finish off a bowl of sultana-less bran.

My friends, it’s all about ratio. You need the sultanas to make the bran interesting. But you’ve got to have those bland fibre flakes to offset the sweetness of the sultanas. It’s a delicate balance. 

It sounds like there’s some kind of life lesson in this. I mean, there’s always a life lesson in something if you look hard enough. But if you look too long, your bran will go soggy and you’ll be left with a bowl of slop.