Snacking on cereal in front of the gaming or binge-watching screen is a well-known dietary sin. But it’s taken until now for someone to elevate this habit to a soaring new level. You can now get ‘Salsa cereal’ specifically for snacking…
It’s one of those things that makes you say, “Why hasn’t someone done this before?” But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a particularly good thing. Much less, a healthy thing…
Cereal is too easy
It’s really too easy just to grab a box of breakfast cereal and plop down in front of your favourite screen-based activity. There’s no prep required. All you need is one free hand to stuff a continuous stream of the stuff into your face. And you hardly have to think about it. The hand-to-mouth motion is one of the earliest spinal reflexes you develop.
But easy can equate to ‘dangerous’ on a number of levels…
History is rife…
… With examples of how prepared treats (particularly ‘commodities’, such as cereal) can become in-stantly addictive, ‘chain-stuffing’ habits. For instance, kids are never satisfied with just one cookie. Since the end of the penny candy era, those treats have been sold in bags and boxes that encourage folks to consume as many as a dozen or more pieces at a time.
Salty snack manufacturers know their products are addictive, and have capitalized on that fact. Lay’s carved out a place in snacking history with the launch of it’s masterful 1963 slogan, ‘Bet you can’t eat just one!’
The crossover threshold
Cereal, particularly, marked a watershed moment in 1952. That was the year the first known recipe for homemade CHEX Party Mix was published. Based on General Mills’ CHEX cereals, these crunchy pop-in snacks were instant classics in both sweet and savoury versions. The first commercially made CHEX Mix party snacks appeared in 1985 – an acknowledgement that they were, by then, a party institution.
Since then, other cereals have crossed over to the snack space with varying degrees of success. Many of those have been pillow-shaped, similar to CHEX. Shreddies and it’s direct competitors feature a distinctly sweet flavour. Products such as Frosted Mini Wheats are literally sugar coated.
And the phenomenally popular Honey Clusters of Oats are glued together with a sugary glaze. They’re more ‘candy’ than ‘cereal’. Almost purpose-made for snacking…
Note that Tostitos is a snack-maker venturing into the cereal space for the first time. That brings the cereal-snack crossover idea full-circle, so to speak.
Cereal especially problematic
Everyone knows cereal is a problematic casual munch. How many pieces constitutes a ‘snack’?
The Nutrition Facts panel on the Frosted Mini Wheats box cites 25 ‘biscuits’ as a standard breakfast bowlful. And the are about 8 bowls to a standard sized box. That bowlful delivers 210 Calories, with 1.5 g total fat, 10 mg sodium and 12 g added sugar (24 percent of your recommended daily maximum allowance).
That all translates to just under 8.5 calories per ‘biscuit’. When you put it that way, it sounds like a lot. And when you’re snacking in front of the screen, who’s counting?
With all that said…
Enter a new concept in savoury cereal snacking: Salsa. The face of the new Tostitos’ product is none other than 2018 Superbowl MVP Julian Edelman, star wide receiver for the NFL’s New England Patiots for 12 seasons. Who better to link the new snack with pro football? In fact, another cereal – Wheaties – started featuring sports-star endorsements way back in 1934, when it premiered its iconic ‘Breakfast of Champions’ slogan.
The official bumpf suggests you eat it from a bowl with a spoon. But we all know no self-respecting snacker is going to do that.
In an eerie echo of the CHEX Mix story, Edelman’s Tostitos Salsa Cereal apparently started out as a homemade concoction – invented by the football hero, himself.
“And now, Tostitos has created a Salsa Cereal Box, which includes all the fixings,” Food & Wine reports. Fans can enter for their chance to win one of the cereal box kits, which includes Edelman’s face on the front, by following @Tostitos on Instagram, liking the official post, and commenting with #TostitosSalsaCereal and #Sweepstakes.”
My take
I have trouble with the basic concept of snack-oriented cereals. Mainly because they’re largely de-livery systems fort added sugar. Tostitos’ Salsa Cereal concept, not so much, maybe. But bad enough when you pour on the salsa, as Edelman prescribes.
It turns out that this ‘Salsa Cereal’ is just Tostitos Scoops corn chips and a bottle of Tostitos Chunky Salsa in a fancy box. So disappointing that it’s not really really ‘cereal’, and not really Salsa-flavoured! Just making this clarification, because ‘fact checking’ has become so important, lately…
By the numbers…
In the video (above), he plops into his bowl of Scoops what I estimate to be at least 6 tbsp. / 99 g of standard Tostitos Salsa. That’s 3 servings according to the Salsa jar Nutrition Facts panel. And that constitutes a 30 Calorie, 750 mg salt bomb.
Anyway… I think you get the picture. If you do decide to try the Edelman-Tostitos snack, you can save a lot of guilt – and nutritional sin – by buying a regular bag of Scoops and using your own salsa. Or at least the low-salt version of the universally popular Tostitos product…
~ Maggie J.