All-day breakfast

IT is time Americans woke up. It is not communism that is taking over the United States, it is cereal companies. Americans have become so manipulated by the cereal interests that a bacon-and-egg breakfast has become lost to our culture. It exists only in strange mutated forms under such frightening names as ``Egg McMuffin'' and ``Croissanwich.''

Cereal ads imply there is no other reasonable way to get nourishment. One ad shows a person -- representing you -- eating a bowl of cereal. An ominous, superimposed voice asks if you are satisfied with your choice. You smugly say you are. Then the voice gloats over you: ``Ha, ha, you will have to eat 12 bowls of your cereal to equal the vitamins contained in one bowl of Vita-chew, which furnishes vitamins for the whole day!''

This is complete nonsense. What are you going to do for the rest of the day, anyway? Sit around dreaming of beef stew? Why do you have to eat an entire day's nourishment in one bowl?

Not much is said in the way of flavor. Everything is crunch! This is because cereal has no flavor, except perhaps to a horse or cow. People have eaten portions of the box without knowing the difference. Cereal companies are aware of this, so you never see people on television eating plain cereal. It always has other things in it like strawberries, bananas, raisins, or even nuts and dates. You have to pretend it's the cereal underneath that you're eating.

The ads show how you must eat the stuff -- always with reckless gusto or even sloppy abandon. This is apparently the way healthy people eat. Well, it is not so much eaten as slobbered, with milk running down from the lips, or dripping from the chin.

Cereal boxes once had a small section in a grocery store. Now they have complete aisles of endless display. It frightens me. Now I've spoken out, you readers may never hear of me again.

The cereal Mafia may have struck.