Cereal is a soup. All rational, experiential and, yes, spiritual evidence points to the truth of the matter. I can hear your objections already: “Soup is not sweet!” “The preparation processes are completely different!” “I knew you were homeschooled!” “Just go back to obsessing over chickens!”

Please feel assured that I will answer the most common arguments against my thesis in a little bit. For now, however, allow me to explain myself and why I hold this view with such vigor.

It all begins at my childhood. As you might expect, I was something of a cereal enthusiast. If my mother had allowed me, I would have had a bowl—or several—of Honey Bunches of Oats for every meal, every day. Alas, I was restricted to fulfill the milk and honey promise of Exodus 3:17 merely in breakfast. Of course, I am now a college student and have entered what others might call “adulthood,” this restriction no longer applies.

I tell you this so you may understand that my words are extensions of a life literally fed with the sublime energy of cereal. If I appear overtaken by emotion at any point in this essay, please forgive me—my tears are not unlike that of a man who is describing what he loves.

THE CORE ARGUMENT

Cereal, which I mean to refer to as the combination of cereal and milk, is a food group which fits into the more expansive food group known as “soup.” My reasoning for this is obvious. Cereal is a liquid-based food which contains a solid component. Soup, as the Merriam-Webster dictionary agrees, is the same. Granted, the definition notes that soups usually have meat, fish or vegetable stock as a base, but as this predicate is not absolute, this should not deter potential new followers of the Cereal-Soup Subgroup theory.

This theory is so convincing that the workers at the Caf, whether or not they realize it, support it unequivocally. Next time you visit it, look at the spoons placed next to the cereal station. They will be soup spoons. What else do customers eat with a soup spoon? Hint: it starts with “s” and ends with “oup.”

RESPONSE TO OBJECTIONS

I will now address some of the earlier objections to demonstrate the unilateral truth of this theory. Some might argue that cereal is not a soup, because soups are not sweet, and most cereals are. Yet this misconception is due to a lack of knowledge about the field. The Kashi brand boasts a cereal with no sugar, and the Swedish have a number of traditional soups that are sweet. The taste of the ingredients, therefore, has no bearing on whether a dish is considered a soup.

Others might say that soup can be eaten without any solids—tomato soup, for instance—while cereal necessitates a solid, and therefore cereal is not a soup. Yet the category of soup is more expansive than that of cereal, and therefore there is no contradiction here. Not all soups are cereal, but all cereals are soup.

Furthermore, it is logical that milk alone may be considered a sort of broth, and therefore fulfill this requirement of a soup. One may object that soup broth is prepared, while milk is not. But who would conceive of cereal being eaten with raw milk delivered straight from a cow’s udder? The pasteurization process is a form of preparation, which includes the process of infusing solids into the milk.

THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD

I could go on for days, if not centuries, about the rational support for this theory, but what I have written will have to presently suffice. I do admit, the ideas I have here expressed are not for the faint of heart or those of low intellect. They take courage, perceptiveness and, if I may say so, a hint of faith. Yet I believe that if you accept it as the truth, as I have, your mind shall be opened to the myriad of implications.

You shall realize, as every person already knows inherently, that every physical object is a soup, bread, salad or a combination of two or three. Ketchup, as well as cereal, is a sweet tomato soup. A tree, of course, is a leaf and wood salad. A book is naturally a book bread. Even humans—including you, dear reader—are bread bowls containing soup.

Yet these are things to be grasped later. For now, it will be enough to acknowledge that cereal is indeed a soup. Take up the spoon of your intellect and delve into the sugary goodness of truth, and Happy April Fool’s from all of us at The Chimes.