I can’t remember my first bowl of All Bran, the breakfast cereal that looks like a bird’s nest and tastes like a birds nest. I would have been in my teens, I think, as I was certainly eating it every day when I went to university in 1995. Which means I’ve been eating it for 30 years… until last week!

What happened last week? Did you finally realise that cereals don’t have to taste like cardboard or look like you’ve got a bowl filled with the contents of a woodchipper? No. I don’t want another cereal – while there might be more exotic cereals, perhaps a granola with exotic fruits, or a sugar rush high like Frosties – I want All Bran because, well, that’s what I’ve always had. After 30 years it’s a habit I cannot break. It would be easier to come off crystal meth than change my breakfast routine. Yet, after decades of loyalty, after years of paying who knows what fortune to the Kellog’s company, they have betrayed me! They have changed the recipe for All Bran!

It has a taste, you ask? Yes, like plasterboard or a wicker basket. It may not have been a great taste but you could certainly taste the joinery on your tongue. It was a solid taste. And now: it’s slimy. Yes, slimy.

We’ve improved it, say Kellogs. The old All Bran used to disintegrate to dust in the box and people complained their last bowl was more woodust rather than wood chip. So, we’ve made the All Bran ‘bits’ bigger and we’ve changed the recipe that they won’t melt in your milk. They’ll stay solid so it feel like you’re trying to swallow a bowl full of ice lolly sticks.

But that’s disgusting, I say. Whatever the secret ingredient is to keep the ‘bits’ solid has left a strange slimy taste to them. It’s like swallowing an electricity pole covered in jelly.

And now the ‘bits’ float in the milk like an Alaskan logging operation floating the tree trunks down river.

We’ve even changed the name, say Kellogs, to show the world how much better the new All Bran is over the old one. It’s now called “All Bran Fibre Plus”.

But there’s less fibre in the new one than the old one, I say!

Nevermind that, says Kellogs, we changed the name and that’s what counts! Just give it a go!

I did and now I’m got a box of kindling. It’s no longer a breakfast cereal it’s a fire starting kit.

Well, why don’t you change cereal, asks Kellogs.

I will, I say. But you can’t trick me. You expect me to stop buying All Bran and then I’ll start buying Corn Flakes or Coco Pops or some other Kellogs brand, don’t you.

Damn, you got us.

Well I’m not falling for that. I’m going to get a new cereal to replace the one I’ve eaten for 30 years and it’s not going to be Kellogs. I don’t care what the new cereal tastes like (as to be fair, taste was never a factor with All Bran) as long as it doesn’t have any connection to the Kellog corporation.

Ha, nice try, we make most of the supermarket own brands too. We make everything. You’ll never escape us. We are breakfast!

Just watch me!

So, does anyone know any breakfast cereal made by independent producers who are 100% not connected to Kellog?