When a theme crops up for the third time on this blog, it’s time for me to create a new category for it. In that spirit, I now offer up “Adventures in Wheaties,” which is a perfect compliment to my “Adventures in Gin” category. I’ll use this category to chronicle my love/hate relationship with America’s favorite breakfast cereal.
So what could possibly have driven me to write about Wheaties yet again? After all, I’ve already discussed my A-Rod boycott and my aversion to buying a WNBA-branded box of the stuff. Now I’m convinced that the boys at General Mills are just messing with me.
After all, how do you follow up this box:
with this one?
With all due respect to Tony Gwynn, a class act and a legendary ballplayer, I don’t think Wheaties is doing itself any favors when it displays one of the guys whom people cite when they make their “baseball players aren’t athletes like football and basketball players” argument. I understand the Hall of Fame reasoning in putting him on the box, and it’s not like they’re putting Sidney Ponson on, too, but it’s still not exactly hyping a fit lifestyle.
In the writeup about him on the back of the box, we find that Gwynn
was truly a thinking man’s ballplayer, a perfect blend of art and science. Known best for his artistry with a bat, he also pioneered the extensive use of videotape analysis studying his own game relentlessly, never resting on his success. His work ethic was legendary as he spent countless hours refining his stroke in the batting cage and at the hitting tee.
The writeup goes on to mention that a Wheaties breakfast “can help jumpstart metabolism.” Note that this doesn’t say, “will help jumpstart metabolism,” considering it’s juxtaposed with another picture that doesn’t even employ the slimming effects of a pinstripe uniform.
If I was Hunter Kemper, I’d give up and start eating Krispy Kremes.
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