Recently on Dear Hank and John, John mentioned that he ate his cereal with water (and more recently, John tried his cereal with many other beverages). This raised the question, are there others out there who enjoy non-traditional approaches to cereal? Also, what do people generally do with cereal. Finally, is there a potential water/cereal community for John to be a part of?

To answer these questions, I posted a survey to the r/nerdfighters page asking how people have eaten their cereal, preferred methods, and favorite cereals.

In terms of how people generally eat their cereal, it is clear from the figure below that eating it with milk and eating it dry are dominant.

Ways People Have Eaten Cereal

However, there were 16 respondents who have tried it with water, and almost a fifth have tried other methods, most commonly either eating it with yogurt or an alternative to dairy milk. Some of the more unique responses included:

Pepsi - though this was on a dare (a future vlogbrothers punishment perhaps?)

orange soda

eggnog

iced coffee

Guinness

Kahlua

ranch dressing



ice-cream

With regard to preferred methods of eating cereal, with milk, and dry were on top as you can see below. Other preferred methods mostly included alternatives to dairy milk (soy, almond, rice). Unfortunately for John, only one respondent preferred their cereal with water (and this person specified that they really don’t eat cereal anyways).

Preferred Method of Eating Cereal

I also asked about the type of meal in which they typically eat cereal (i.e., more with Breakfast or more as a snack?). Breakfast was a clear winner, but there was a large contingent of cereal-snackers as well. Alternative answers consisted of individuals who did not have a preferred meal, or those that ate cereal with milk for breakfast and dry as a snack.

Preferred Meal for Cereal

Finally, in terms of favorite cereals, there were a wide variety of answers (80 different types of cereal!) from a wide variety of places (e.g., Just Right and Weet-Bix from Australia, Knusper Auchan from Romania, Quaker Cruesli From The Netherlands, Kellogs Tresor from Germany, Vector from Canada, and Cini Minis from Estonia). However, the big name brands did dominate the favorites, with Honey Bunches of Oats and Cinnamon Toast Crunch as the top two.

So what have we learned from this survey? It appears that most people eat cereal with milk or dry, and that Breakfast and as a snack are the most common meals for cereal. Also, though more big name brands tend to dominate the favorites, there is a striking amount of variety with regards to favorite brands of cereal. And finally, although this survey may not have yielded a large group of water/cereal connoisseurs, perhaps John can gain solace knowing that there have certainly been stranger beverages mixed with cereal.

*Also please check out the Deciderata youtube channel to see how me and a friend managed to subliminally prime youtube viewers to prefer one shape over another! (Videos can also be found on my Tumblr page as well).