Ed Daly eats a lot of cereal. The Hoboken resident worked on Wall Street for years – trading multi-million dollar bonds – but he always made time for his favorite meal.
“I’ve always been a cereal fan,” Daly said last week. “I eat it on random nights for dinner, sometimes lunch, and every day for breakfast.”
In a fast-paced work environment, Daly didn’t have time to chase a different passion of his: writing.
“I had been getting into creative writing, working on different projects like screenplays and different books,” Daly said.
Then, the stock market crashed, and Daly was laid off from his New York City job in 2008. Instead of jumping back into the financial market like some of his colleagues, he decided to chase his passion for writing.
‘Looking at the colors staring back at you is a little jarring in the morning.’ – Hoboken resident and author Ed Daly
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And so, the quest began to write the book “Cereal: Snap, Crackle, Pop Culture.”
Raiding the aisles of local grocery stores over time, Daly gathered approximately 90 different boxes of cereal.
“I ate nothing but cereal for two months,” Daly said. “I may have gone out to dinner with my family a few times, but mostly, I ate nothing but cereal.”
Daly wouldn’t just eat a bowl – he ate the whole box.
“The two extremes were pretty bad for me,” he said. “I had the ones that tasted like cardboard, I had a tough time getting through that, and that was depressing. And then there’s the monster cereals like Boo Berry and Franken Berry, which were so sweet that it was pretty painful. Looking at the colors staring back at you is a little jarring in the morning. It’s something that looks like plutonium and I had to eat it.”
Using his friend who wrote a coffee table book as his inspiration, he decided to write a comedy book about cereal, tying in cultural and humorous references.
For those considering cereal diets, there may be hope.
“I would say I lost a little weight,” Daly said. “If I was replacing pizza with [sugarless cereal], it helped. On days where I had to go heavy on the Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms, I probably worked out a little more or added a mile or two to my run.”
But skim milk is recommended for this crazy diet.
“If I was drinking whole milk I’d probably be twice the size I am now,” he said, laughing.
His favorite cereal, of the 90 he’s tried, is Life cereal.
In addition to the stomachaches that come with eating a whole box of Fruity Pebbles, Daly also got some weird looks when shopping.
“I would buy about 10 to 12 boxes at a time,” Daly said. “I got some comments, but I tried to blame it on my kids by just saying they have different tastes. The conversation got too confusing when I tried to explain what I was doing.”
The “cereal eating” phase lasted for two months.
“Some days I would have five bowls of cereal,” he said.
He said he only truly enjoyed “about 50 percent” of the cereals.
The book
“Cereal” is Daly’s first book, but he said he hopes to work on more writing projects in the future. The 96-page book features chapters categorized based on sugar content.
The book is published Mark Batty Publisher, an independent publisher who partners with Random House Publisher Services to distribute and sell the books. Daly’s friend had published a book through them, so Daly pitched his book to them.
Daly said he learned a bit about the food industry during his yearlong process of eating, writing, and promoting.
“The store must have thought I was doing inventory for the competition,” he said. “I walked down the aisles with my iPhone and wrote down all the cereals I needed to get. I systematically went through the checklist. I learned a lot about product placement. The Cheerios are always going to have the prime spot. The lesser known cereals are at the bottom.”
“Cereal: Snap, Crackle, Pop Culture” will be available beginning May 31 wherever books are sold.
For more information about the book, visit MarkBattyPublisher.com.
Ray Smith may be reached at RSmith@hudsonreporter.com