Since the inception of the trademark breakfast food, an age-old question has been asked: Is cereal soup? This question no doubt arises from the inherently soupy nature of cereal: it’s made of chunks of food suspended in a liquid base, just like soup. This has led to a lengthy and contentious debate, one that desperately needs to be settled. Cereal, like many other foods, such as oatmeal, gazpacho, and stew, is a kind of soup.

First, an important distinction. For the purposes of this article, ‘cereal,’ as a food, consists of solid chunks of roasted grain suspended in milk. Soup is generally considered to be a liquid dish with water (and/or cream), vegetables, meat, or grains. There are a few problems with that definition, because the nature of soup as a food category rather than a dish means that some traditional soups are excluded by the conservative definition.

Soup is less of a single dish and more of a broad category within food. Many other individual dishes, like bisque and stews, are considered soups even by the most conservative soup definitions. Cereal, though, fits with the general trend of other soups, like Mediterranean stews and most traditional soups, with its solid chunks in a liquid base.

A common argument is that cereal can’t be considered soup because soup is typically served warm. There are a few things that contradict that idea. The first being that not all soups are hot, like gazpacho, a Spanish dish consisting of cold tomato soup. The second is that milk is cooked through a pasteurization process by heating it almost to a boil to remove pathogens. The last thing to consider is oatmeal. Oatmeal is undoubtedly a breakfast cereal, but it is warm and, instead of milk, can also reside in water, like many ‘traditional’ soups. Soup enthusiasts may question where ‘soup’ soup ends and ‘categorical’ soups begin? Soup as a food, both culturally and definitively, is more of a category than a food itself. If someone were to say “I’m eating soup,” that wouldn’t answer as to what exactly they were eating, but if they said “I’m eating cereal,” it narrows down to different grain types.

When a person traditionally prepares cereal, they pour cereal in first (milk first is sacrilege) and then fill most of the bowl with milk, so most people only consider cereal as those two in their cold forms. But think for a moment about a soup like corn chowder; anyone would call it a soup, but fundamentally, it’s the same as corn flakes in milk.

It’s a little sad that people are so averse to categorizing food as they logically should. 

Cereal is inherently soupy, especially after the cereal grains have been softened by milk. Stews and creamy soups are both universally considered soups, which displays the categorical nature of the word ‘soup.’ Now we can agree soup is more effectively defined as a category of foods, simply meaning that a majority of the food is fluid. This would qualify more ‘traditional’ soups, like tomato soup, as well as less popular and cold soups, like gazpacho or breakfast cereal.

Soup has become so universally accepted as a liquid food that it should definitely be recognized as a category of food rather than a single dish. While soup may not always be cereal, cereal is certainly always soup.