Rhetoric

Thrilled to Bits: How a bargain brand cereal threw me for a loop.

Rheya Tanner

Hi, my name is Rheya, and I’m an appleholic.

It all started one evening at the Dollar Tree there on Colonial, where I was impulse buying a bunch of stupid stuff because I love a good bargain. I usually skip the grocery section in my prowl through the aisles, but today, the cereals caught my eye. They had these little pint baggies of name-brand Apple Jacks, and then they had full-size boxes of their bargain brand, Apple Bits.

I, calculating very mathematically that more cereal is more cereal than less cereal, threw a box in the cart alongside the glitter slime and the charcoal soap.

Turns out, they’re pretty good. Better than the name brand, even. They’re crunchier, and they have a way stronger apple flavor.

According to the box, they are “now even better tasting” than they were at some previous unspecified point in time, which is pretty neat; plus, it says I got 20% more, free! How generous!

Naturally, I had to spread the word about this naturally-and-artificially-flavored discovery. At first I got some lifted eyebrows (from people who probably haven’t had a single Apple Jack in, like, a decade, but offer them a knockoff and they’re suddenly connoisseurs of kids’ cereal), but then they’d try one, and I would look on smugly as they admitted I was right.

All too soon, I found my fingers grazing the dust at the bottom of the bag, and that’s around when things started to get dark. I popped back over to the store under the guise of needing napkins, and picked up a couple boxes of Apple Bits along the way. I mean, they’re only a dollar, so I might as well pick up two to last me through the week.

Fast-forward a week. A dozen empty boxes of Apple Bits are strewn about my room like corpses, cold reminders that I am losing control of my life and also that I am out of Apple Bits. I have a box at the office, a box by my couch, and some backup boxes of its sister cereal, Fruit Rings, for when I’m not feeling very apple-ish. I refuse to look at the nutrition facts as an act of self-care, but

I’m not quite disillusioned enough to pretend that the serving size is half the box. We as a society accept that kids’ cereal is basically dessert, right? I’m probably just as well off with a sleeve of Oreos. But guess what? I’m an adult. I pay taxes. I have a credit score. If I want cereal, I’m getting it; and if I believe with all my heart that it’s healthier than cookies, then how dare some corporation try to limit me with their nutrition labels?

The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. So here it is: I’m addicted to Apple Bits. Also … kinda getting sick of Apple Bits.