Knit your own muesli
Those strange fanatics who ostentatiously mortify themselves, inwardly and outwardly, with health biscuits and health garments, battened aggressively on the new food. Earnest spectacled young men devoured it on the steps of the National Liberal Club. A bishop who did not believe in a future state preached against the poster, and a peer’s daughter died from eating too much of the compound. A further advertisement was obtained when an infantry regiment mutinied and shot its officers rather than eat the nauseous mess…
Yes, it’s a snippet from Saki’s short story, Filboid Studge, about a young man who made a success of his putative father-in-law’s new breakfast cereal by grasping “the fact that people will do things from a sense of duty which they would never attempt as a pleasure”. He changes the food’s name from “Pipenta” to “Filboid Studge”, creates advertisements such as one that depicts “the Damned in Hell suffering a new torment from their inability to get at the Filboid Studge”, and thus makes the older man a fat wodge of cash. The older man then makes sure his daughter marries someone far richer than the £200 per year poster designer.
Whenever I read that story, I have muesli at the back of my mind. I can’t bear the stuff, and I can barely believe how much some people are willing to pay for it.
However, food company Alara has just pushed up the stakes and is now offering a bespoke muesli service. If you visit this page, you can create your own mixture using up to 16 different ingredients, including such things as Yacon Root, Lucuma Fruit Powder, Cacao Nibs and - at only £96.46 per kilo - freeze dried blueberries. My own, impromptu mixture - which I have christened “Graun Poison” and hope never to taste - weighed in at £33.62 for the kilo (including postage, mixing charge and a one-off set up fee).
If anything, it proves to me that Alara has hit on two other truths. People don’t just buy this stuff out of a sense of duty, but for the heightened pleasure of spending obscene amounts of cash on it, not to mention the chance to create a mix that will inspire a crazed, envious and competitive streak in their friends and neighbours.
It might be worth finding out if the owners of Alara have any daughters - heiresses tend to get snapped up pretty quickly, even now.
Published on 13th May, 2008
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