Tag Archives: cascadian farm

News: Cascadian Farm Releases Limited Kernza Cereal to Promote Climate Change-Fighting Grain

Kernza Cereal

Move over, Life: there’s a new cereal that’s kid tested, and Mother Nature approved.

But much like climate change, we’ll need to act quickly if we want to get a handle on it. It’s called Honey Toasted Kernza Cereal, and it’s the result of an initiative by General Mills and Cascadian Farm that’s over two years in the making, all to promote its namesake grain.

See, Kernza is an official name for intermediate wheatgrasses that have a number of positive environmental impacts, from helping fauna restore their habitats to protecting our flora’s water supply—not to mention keeping more carbon from impacting our atmosphere.

Kernza vs Climate Change

While I don’t cover nearly as many “healthy” cereals on this blog as I do stomach-frostingly sweet ones, I’ll do anything I can to signal-boost a cereal that ensures a future world where we can still eat gut-glazingly sugary breakfasts—and it’s probably a more sustainable cereal eco-solution than living off the grid in a cabin made of mortared Mini-Wheats.

(Can you imagine the dust problems in the crawlspace?)

Cascadian Farm’s Honey Toasted Kernza Cereal can be acquired by donating $25 or more to The Land Institute. 100% of the money goes to this group that’s helping hype up Kernza across the globe, so it can be a bigger household name than all those second millennia-old bananas found in Ancient Grain Cheerios. By unfortunate circumstance, Honey Toasted Kernza Cereal is more limited of an edition than anticipated: crop failure led to a smaller harvest that could only constitute 6,000 boxes.

So if you want to pair your morning R&R with a little PR for an especially green greenhorn grain, head to the cereal’s Fundly page.

Review: Cascadian Farm Organic Vanilla Chia Crunch Cereal

Cascadian Farm Organic Vanilla Chia Crunch Cereal Review Box

Apparently Cascadian Farm is a real farm, but I refuse to learn anything about it. Instead, I want to preserve my fantastical mental image of Cascadian Farm as a quaint rural community where busier General Mills cereals like Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Golden Grahams go to escape the city’s sugar-addled hustle and bustle, settle down, and become tamer versions of themselves, with no-nonsense names like Cinnamon Crunch and Graham Crunch.

Yes, the Cascadian Farm of my imagination is pretty much a breakfast parody of Harvest Moon, and I’d like to keep it that way.

Now the newest citizen in Cascadian Farm’s Wholesome Good-Time Barnyard Bayou (my mental name, not theirs) isn’t a direct derivation of another General Mills product. But it does remind me of Kashi’s recent Plant Power Vanilla Pepita Clusters, which is why I took note and lovingly planted Vanilla Chia Crunch into my grocery store cart like a transplanted chia plant. I just wrote the word plant in that sentence more times than I have cumulatively since 2008.

Kashi’s take on vanilla ‘n’ seeds tasted like cupcake-frosted popcorn. Let’s see if the Animal Crossing of cereal brands can be just as memorable. Continue reading