Don't Eat Wheaties

Please don't eat Wheaties.
Just don’t. Trust me.

Oh, of course, you want to know why.

“Why shouldn’t I eat Wheaties?” you ask.
“Why shouldn’t I eat the cereal endorsed by star athletes across America?” you plead.
If you must have an explanation, here’s a start.

The short answer, an anecdote:

My grandparents had to leave their house because of failing health. My father and I attempted to clean up the place, which was filled in every nook and cranny with unimaginable collections from my Grandpa’s garage sale days. Literally tens of thousands of baseball cards, old magazines, electronic equipment, four decades of clothing, piles of aluminum foil and hydrogen peroxide (depression-era syndrome), hunting and fishing gear, “aroma-disc” players, marbles, comic books and so much miscellaneous junk and treasure which cannot be accurately described, only remembered by those who saw it firsthand.

Along with all that, the house was terribly infested with mice

The rodents had gotten into everything. They ate the kitchen; they ate through the flour and cake mix, the candy bars and paper towels; they chewed the boxes on dozens of packages of aluminum foil. The mice ate everything in the kitchen cupboards, even the flower-decorated overlays lining the cabinets.

They chewed through the plastic cover on popcorn bags which were (for some reason) stashed in the bottom of boxes of comic books in the crowded basement. They chewed through the bags and ate all the popcorn seeds. They snacked on the boxes of gimmicky hygiene products my aunt’s husband used to sell and gnawed on the stacks of Guns and Ammo.

They chewed through the paper in every desk in every room in the house; they ate through clothes in every closet, nibbled on record covers, munched on baseball cards. They ate every one of the dozens of poison bricks we set out for them, and they kept on coming.

All the while, they shat everywhere they went.

The entire time the mice took over, what I can only guesstimate was a period of two to three years, as they digested every chewable and edible item in the home, they never dared touch Grandpa’s collectible boxes of Wheaties, the ones with the Nascar memorabilia inside. They never even chewed the cardboard, let alone the healthy Wheaties cereal inside. The mice ate everything in the house, except the Wheaties.

Perhaps there is some mouse-repellant ink on the Wheaties box cover. Perhaps the packages are so finely sealed the delicious Wheaties scent escaped the senses of the voracious rodents. But I tend to doubt that.

In any case, don’t eat Wheaties.


I’m reminded of the canary in the coal mine.
I’ve read that flies love sugar but won’t touch Nutrasweet, also known as aspartame.
I drank a lot of diet soda as a kid.

I’m reminded of how to cook frogs. Drop them in slightly warm water and they’ll be grateful. Then increase the heat, just a little bit at a time. By the time the frog realizes he’s your dinner, the water is already boiling.

Just don’t eat Wheaties.
Just in case. Just until we figure it out.

Maybe the problem is acrylamide, a reported byproduct of Round-up and similar popular weed killers, which is allegedly formed when subject to high temperatures, such as are common in high-volume processing of grain.

Acrylamide is alleged to be a carcinogenic neurotoxin.

Acrylamide has been named in recent California lawsuits and is under intense European scrutiny.

In any case, just don’t eat Wheaties.

If it’s not good enough for a mouse, how good can it be for you?

-J.A.H.

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