This Australian Breakfast Is “Like Sucking Mucus Out of a Corpse” AND IT’S NOT EVEN VEGEMITE
This Australian Breakfast Is “Like Sucking Mucus Out of a Corpse” AND IT’S NOT EVEN VEGEMITE
Weet-Bix in Sydney
I have vague memories of an ad campaign that ran during the lead-up to the Sydney Olympics. Buffed and toothy athletes in their green-and-gold tracksuits stood, backdropped by an Australian flag, talking about how many Weet-Bix they ate each morning.
“Five,” bragged the sprinter. “Eleven,” growled the weightlifter. “Three,” chirped the pole vaulter.
I can’t be certain whether that’s an accurate memory or not, but I know that a variation of that campaign has been running more or less ever since. Weet-Bix stands for nutrition and nationalism, and they won’t let you forget it. It’s “Australia’s No. 1 Breakfast Cereal”; it’s the “Official Breakfast of the Socceroos” and the “Official Breakfast of the Australian Cricket Team.” Rather immodestly, it’s also the “Breakfast of Champions.”
But Weet-Bix are bloody awful. In case the name didn’t give it away, they’re wheat biscuits: even the most charitably-minded would struggle to describe them as anything other than “edible.” I’m not convinced they’re even particularly nutritious, although they do boast of being a great source of fiber. So is cardboard.
I think even the manufacturers of Weet-Bix have realized this problem, because when I get to the supermarket to pick some up—for the first time in decades—there’s an abundance of alternatives under the same brand. There’s a gluten-free option (sorghum, for the curious). There’s an organic option. There’s Weet-Bix for kids; half a dozen flavors of Weet-Bix drinks; Weet-Bix Bites and Blends and Minis. It’s all a bit too bright-lights-big-city for me.
Bugger this, I think to myself, and go next door to the Aldi. They’ve got a generic version that’s a perfect simulacrum of the Weet-Bix I remember. Plain, unassuming, shredded wheat oblongs in a box with the Southern Cross proudly spackled across it. It’s even got the official Made in Australia logo in the corner, so you know it must be good.
At home, I dump three of my ersatz-biscuits in a bowl, pour some milk over them and wait for them to soak it up. Some people like theirs crunchy, but I prefer my breakfasts mushy and unthreatening. While I wait I ponder the reasoning behind all the flag-waving on the box.
The original Weet-Bix are made by a company called Sanitarium. Like Kellogg’s, Sanitarium was founded on Seventh Day Adventist beliefs that vegetarianism, circumcision, and enemas light the path to righteousness.
Unlike Kellogg’s, however, Sanitarium is still wholly owned by the Adventists—although as noted their advertising leans more on the nutrition and nationalism, less on the circumcision and enemas. They claim to have invented the idea of shredded wheat biscuits right here in Sydney. It’s a fair call, although hardly one to swell your breast with patriotic pride; and with some variety of the cereal now available in most of the world it’s no longer the case that shredded wheat is a unique and defining aspect of the Australian psyche.
When my gruel’s nice and ready, I take a few bites. It’s cold and oleaginous, like sucking the mucus out of a corpse. I chop up a banana into it and wish I’d bought oats instead.