ARGHH!! BRAIN HURT!

[Snypiuer]

HELP!!! Just heard a question posed on a T.V. show and I can NOT stop thinking about it, here it is:

Is cereal a soup?

[Quincunx]

I have thought long about this. Cereal isn’t more than the sum of its ingredients, so it isn’t a soup. It doesn’t become milkcereal, but stays as discrete ingredients of cereal plus milk.

Oatmeal raises some uncomfortable comparisons, though.

[Snypiuer]

O.K., I've been considering your point of view for a while and have a few questions:

What if you take your time and your cereal begins to turn mushy and loses cohesion, blending with the milk?

What if you add cut up fresh fruit, like strawberries, blueberries, etc. and the juice blends with the milk and the cereal absorbs some?

What about cereal that changes the milks color or taste?

Would any of these situations make it a soup?

If yes, is it then, just a matter of how long the ingredients are combined that dictates a cereals' "soup-ness"?

If it can BECOME soup, at what point does it?

Does eating it quickly keep it from being a soup, while eating it slowly allows it to become one?

If combining the ingredients begins the process of it becoming a soup, couldn't it then be considered a soup at that moment?

If an individual CHOOSES to eat it quickly in order to stop it from becoming a soup, can that individual be considered "pro-choice" in terms of cereal being a soup or not?

If an individual eats it slowly because they believe that it is soup from the moment the ingredients are combined, can that individual be considered "pro-soup"?

FINALLY, and this comes down to the true heart of the matter, who is right: pro-choice or pro-soup?!