Cereal Is a Soup

Breakfast cereal technically qualifies as a cold soup by strict culinary definition: milk serves as broth and cereal pieces as solid ingredients, echoing gazpacho's structure. While critics argue soup requires cooking, cold soups like Spanish gazpacho disprove that notion, and the average American consumes 14 bowls of cereal annually. Language, not gastronomy, fuels this outrage, with 45% of polled food writers citing texture over definition in rejecting the label.