I look forward to my bowl of bran flakes each morning as a healthy start to my day. But what I hate is getting to the bottom of the box and encountering the crumb zone, that layer of powdered cereal that sometimes represents 10 percent of the total weight of the cereal. If any of that stuff happens to mix with milk it turns the whole bowl of cereal into inedible sludge. OK, you can tell I don’t like crumbs very much.
But what I want to know is where these crumbs come from. Are they created as wastage during the manufacturing process, and the manufacturer just allows them to go in the box with the rest of the cereal? Hardly seems like they would deliberately put in something they know people don’t like. I guess the other possibility is that they get crushed in transit. Seems plausible, but what exactly are they doing to these boxes that is crushing the cereal so badly, and couldn’t they have found a way to transport their product that would minimise this? And since there are rarely visible signs of trauma on the cereal box itself, I doubt they are being severely manhandled in transit. So is the cereal just going through a natural crumbling process, like radioactive decay?
I, for one, would pay extra for cereal that I knew was crumb-free. They could even create a “Crumb-free” logo, kind of like Dolphin-free tuna…
I think part of the problem is that the crumbs are not strictly limited to the very bottom of the box. I would say that I find crumbs in my cereal anywhere after the half-empty point. And throwing away half the box would be pretty wasteful.
You can minimize the amount of wastage by sifting the contents of the bottom of the package with a colander to salvage the remaining cereal embedded in the powder.
Read your box more closely - there’s probably wording like “This package is sold by weight, not volume, Some settling of the contents may have occurred during shipping and handling.” For “settling”, read “crumbification”. I suppose they could make the flakes more uniform, and stack them in little tubes like Pringles …
I suspect that any packaging solution which would keep this from happening would add too much to the cost to be acceptable to most people, or add other annoyances. For instance, it might work to put them in little “single serving” packages inside the larger box. Then you would get to carp about the single little package not being enough cereal, and two of them being too much.
Soak the crumbs in a little water until malleable.
Form into a ball, squeeze tightly to remove excess water.
Roll into a rough circle approximately 2mm thick.
Leave to dry completely in a warm place.
When dry, pretend you are a mouse and hold resultant giant bran flake in both hands, nibbling around the edge until thoroughly consumed.
I just tried an experiment. I put a good quantity of bran flakes, crumb-free, into a ziploc bag and shook them around for about 30 seconds. When I looked in the bag there were some flake fragments, but not that much, and definitely nothing that would qualify as crumbs. Not a terribly scientific study I admit, but I still find it a bit hard to imagine such a large quantity of fine crumbs being generated by anything short of a centrifuge…
How many periods of 30 seconds do you think the average box of cereal spends on a truck in shipment? And a centrifuge would probably do little as that’s a pretty uniform movement. I’d think it’s the jostling up and down as the truck goes over bumps that breaks the flakes.
Or maybe the trucks have suspensions that minimize this, but the consumer (you know who you are) pounded the crap out of them driving home from the store. Next time try walking home (smoothly, please) from the store and see if there are still crumbs.
I suspect that *picking up the box *creates a lot of crumbs.
When you pick up the box, you squeeze it, and that force is transmitted to the flakes inside, some of which are crushed, creating crumbs.
The cereal is screened prior to packaging and the crumbs, which are called cereal tailings, are sold on the commodities market for use in animal feed. The starches and sugars have great binding properties.
At the feed manufacturer I once worked at I used to buy cereal tailings by the bulk truck load. You could identify the type of cereal from the look of the tailings, sometimes Cheerios, Fruit Loops, etc.
The crumbs in your box of cereal are created after packaging and during transport and handling.
I’m thinking that every time you tilt the box to pour some out, then tilt it back to upright, you’re abrading the flakes and creating dust/fragments which then settle to the bottom of the bag.
I propose an experiment:
Buy two boxes of identical cereal at the same time.
Open box A. open the bag, dispense one bowlful of cereal, return box to upright, close bag. Repeat until you begin dispensing crumbs/dust.
Open box B. open the bag, dispense cereal in one continuous pour until you begin dispensing crumbs/dust.
remove the bags, and compare the amount of crumbs/dust in each; my hypothesis is that there will be a considerably larger amount in bag A.
Get a block of Styrofoam. Cut some Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa ornaments out of it. Coat lightly with white glue. Sprinkle with crumbs. (Mix crumbs with crumbs of Trix or Froot Loops for more color.) Hang up to dry. Hang in window during Holiday season.
Make sure the cereal box is closed, turn it upside-down, and shake it a bit. Then pour. The shaking will move the crumbs at the bottom and distribute them a bit more evenly, so you won’t notice them.
