The almost universal hold of breakfast cereal makes a revealing case study of evolutionary process behind the modern diet. One of the earliest convenience foods, processed cereals represent a triumph of marketing, packaging and US economic and foreign policy. They are the epitome of a cheap commodity converted by manufacturing to higher value goods; of agricultural surplus turned into profitable export. Somehow they have wormed into our confused consciousness as intrinsically healthy when, by and large, they are degraded foods that have to have any goodness artificially restored.As someone who has never enjoyed the experience of breakfast cereal- whichever brand it was, the bit always seemed to me to go from dusty to soggy in the space of a few mouthfuls- I have long been intrigued by how the British breakfast was conquered and what it tells us about the rest of our food. For this is the elephant in the room of course: it is the industrial processing of food that is the real problem, and to understand where, not we, but rather it, all went wrong, you have to understand the economic and political structures behind today's food system.