I Regret to Inform You That Cereal Has a Strong Soup Case

I regret to inform everyone that breakfast has developed a legal problem.

Cereal may be soup.

I don't like writing those words any more than you like reading them, but once the question enters your head, it refuses to leave. A bowl contains solid food floating in liquid; you eat it with a spoon, and at some point, reasonable people have to admit the prosecution has evidence.

The dictionary initially appears willing to rescue us. Soup is commonly defined as liquid food made by boiling or simmering meat, fish, or vegetables with other ingredients.

Excellent!

Case dismissed.

Cheerios survive another morning with their dignity intact.

From Collins Dictionary:

soup

(sup )

Word forms: soupsmass noun

Soup is liquid food made by boiling meat, fish, or vegetables in water.

...home-made chicken soup. 

Unfortunately, the defense immediately develops issues. Some definitions describe soup more broadly as liquid food containing solid ingredients, and milk can be used in soups. Worse, soup doesn't even have to be hot. Gazpacho and vichyssoise have been sitting quietly in the culinary record, waiting to ruin breakfast.

Cold soup exists, sweet soup exists, and fruit soup exists, and soup can contain cream, milk, bread, vegetables, noodles, crackers, meatballs, beans, or things somebody found in the refrigerator 20 minutes before dinner.

Suddenly, Captain Crunch isn't looking quite so innocent.

Consider the physical evidence:

• Cereal goes into a bowl.
• Liquid is poured over it.
• Solid pieces float in the liquid.
• A spoon delivers both components together.
• As time passes, the solid ingredients absorb some of the liquid and become softer.

Ladies and gentlemen, that's an uncomfortable amount of soup behavior.

Cereal's strongest defense may be preparation. Soup generally becomes soup through cooking. Chicken noodle soup isn't a bowl of cooked noodles with chicken broth dumped over them at the table. The ingredients usually spend some time together before dinner arrives.

Cereal doesn't work that way. The flakes, loops, squares, marshmallows, or suspiciously chocolate-colored pebbles arrive completely finished. Milk joins the operation at the last second. Nobody stands over a bowl of Frosted Flakes and announces, "The soup needs another five minutes."

Culture may provide the final acquittal. Food categories aren't created only by chemistry or geometry. We know cereal isn't soup because generations of Americans have agreed it isn't soup, and civilization occasionally depends on everyone refusing to ask additional questions.

Otherwise, breakfast begins rapidly collapsing.

If cereal is soup, is oatmeal stew?

Is yogurt with granola chowder?

Does putting strawberries in cereal make it fruit soup?

If I drink the remaining milk directly from the bowl. Have I finished my soup or merely abandoned table manners?

Then we reach the milk-first people. Every society develops customs because chaos remains an alternative. Pouring milk into an empty bowl before adding cereal doesn't necessarily make someone dangerous, but I would still prefer they explain themselves before reaching important responsibilities.

Wisconsin adds another complication because we're not likely to accept an argument that milk somehow disqualifies food from serious consideration. We have built a respectable portion of the state's identity around convincing the rest of America that dairy improves almost everything.

So after careful review, I offer the following:

Cereal meets enough superficial qualifications for soup that the accusation can't be laughed out of court. Cold temperature doesn't save it, milk doesn't save it, and the bowl and spoon certainly don't help.

But cereal escapes conviction because soup requires something cereal doesn't possess: intent.

Nobody wakes up craving a refreshing bowl of Lucky Charms soup. Nobody asks the waitress what today's cereal soup is. Campbell's has wisely stayed out of the cornflakes business.

Cereal, therefore, remains cereal.

The court is adjourned.

On a personal note, please don't ask me whether a hot dog is a sandwich.

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