My dear lifelong friend Jonathan composed a moving ode to his morning cereal, which goes as thus:

Frosted Shredded Wheat
I am going to finish this bowl of you.
So decent, so plump with milk, so crispy still,
Even though – chewing – I spoke into a phone
Making plans for breakfast. Hanging up
I look at you. All in. Milk-soaked.
Dear little squares, don’t worry.
I will eat all of you.

And here’s my counter-Ode:

Ohhhh Frosted Shredded Wheat.

Oh highly processed gmos, sprayed by poison and shipped in trucks and stored for months…I could put you down and pick you up and eat you in a decade, and you’d taste exactly the same, and give precisely the same nutritional value.

Or, I could cease to buy your corporate parents, and instead buy some hippie organic granola full of dried fruit and organic oats or hot cereal…and support farmers’ health and small, more local companies.

Oh Frosted Shredded Wheat, you are the breakfast equivalent of putting lipstick on a pig–still a pig. And as I am what I eat, I shall eat a bit of Heaven, Earth and Wholesome each morning, and fire up my heart and brain with the stuff that lungta is made of, instead.