Talk:Cereal

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[edit] Title

As a speaker of American English, I think making the main entry of this topic "Cereal" rather than "Grain" is very wrong.

"Grain" is what grows on plants. "Cereal" is what gets poured into breakfast bowls.

(I am expecting AV, proponent of "'correct' is 'what people actually use'", to leap to my defense here. :-) )

Well I too speak American English, but I chose to make cereal the name of the entry based on an informal survey of written usage (academic and statistical), where "cereal" seems to predominate. Also this is established usage on Wikipedia: the CIA World Factbook stat sheets that have been copied by the dozens into country entries all refer to "cereals" not "grain".
For what it's worth, my US English dictionary gives grassy seed crops as the primary definition of "cereal" and defines "grain" as small seeds, not necessarily of grasses.
Of course there is room for debate here ;-).
I've revised the article to include some definitions and breakfast cereal. Hopefully that makes the situation clear.
-- hajhouse
Why not add a disambig to the top?
This article is about grains. See also breakfast cereals
— Asbestos | Talk 15:28, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Would anyone object to adding the said dismbig? — Asbestos | Talk 09:01, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Added. Feel free to edit wording. — Asbestos | Talk 11:18, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I think that the title should be CEREALS (plural) as it is a collective noun. This would also solve the breakfast debate to some extent.

[edit] Production

Also the entry about millet needs revision as it is still the staple food of millions of people in Africa and Asia and grown on millions of hectares. In the USA the use is mainly for animal feed.

Moving this comment here from the article page:

(FIXME: FAO productions statictics to back this is would be nice. Anyone know if these may be had on the web and what theit copyright terms are?......Data is not copyrightable BTW. See copyright) -- Zoe
Here's some data from FAO for the year 2004:
crop world production (metric tons)
maize 705,293,226
wheat 624,093,306
rice 608,496,284
barley 155,114,564
sorghum 60,224,964
millet 27,675,957
oats 26,961,437
rye 19,544,519
triticale 13,739,147
green corn (maize) 8,826,666
buckwheat 2,856,090
fonio 264,100
quinoa 52,900
Source: FAOSTAT database, which provides stats based on metric tonnage.
FAO's FACTOIDS section also provides some brief stats based on energy.
I'm afraid I'm a little too lazy to decide what to do about the grains for which FAO doesn't provide data, so I'll leave it to whomever else to reorder the list in the article. --164.76.162.246 03:21, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
The comments in the table probably need to be clarified: If maize has the largest production amount and is grown in both temperate and tropical lands, how can wheat be "The primary cereal of temperate regions" and rice be "The primary cereal of tropical regions"?

I'm not sure my last note got through so forgive the potential duplication>

I was trying to explain grain to my African friend: she knew sweetcorn, wheat and rice, but not barley, rye, millet, or some of the others. Photos attached to your desctiptions (as with corn) would be very beneficial!! judomom

ERROR IN PRODUCTION TABLE UNITS
The headings at the top of the table showed the units of measure for the three production years (2006, 2005 and 1961) to be "Mt". That is an error so I have changed them to their proper abbreviation, "t". The abbreviation "Mt" stands for Megatonne, and NOT for "metric tonne", as must have been originally suppossed . In other words, when viewing the data in the table, the 2006 world Maize production is currently shown as 695 million metric tonnes, not the 695 million-million metric tonnes, the table previously showed . For confirmation regarding the proper abbreviations to use, click on the link for "metric tonne" at the top of the "2006" column. Boot (talk)

[edit] First word of article

The article begins "Wheat crops are". shouldn't that be "Cereal crops are"?

[edit] chandler?

And a merchant of corn was in Britain called a chandler

Was this common usage? I checked the Oxford English Dictionary and there was no mention of it. The primary usage was a candle maker, the second an officer responsible for the supply of candles, the third was a retailer of supplies for a particular purpose. I have heard of a fishing business wholesale supplier being called a chandler. -- WormRunner | Talk 17:52, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Partially answering my own question: It seems that chandler is used in combination as "corn chandler" "tallow chandler" "ship's chandler" but I do not find chandler used alone as a corn merchant. Also, the use of chandler being a specialized merchant is american as well as british, as is the candle-maker usage. In other words, the statement in the whole is misleading. -- WormRunner | Talk 21:09, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Cereal crops are mostly grasses cultivated for their edible seeds (actually a fruit called a caryopsis). Cereal grains are grown in greater quantities worldwide than any other type of crop and provides more food energy to the human race than any other crop. In some developing nations, cereal grains constitute practically the entire diet of common folk. In developed nations, cereal consumption is more moderate but still substantial. The word cereal has its origin in the Roman goddess of grain, Ceres. Staple food grains are traditionally called corn in Britain, though that word became specified for maize in the United States. And a merchant of corn was in Britain called a chandler, which in the United States is an obsolete word for someone who sells candles.


Oats, barley, and some products made from them.


[edit] Order of Cereals

Why does the order given in "approximate order of greatest annual production" seem to be contradicted by the Rice, Wheat and Maize articles? Or am I confused by a linguistic thing?

64.231.117.135 21:09, 21 January 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Linseed

An anonymous editor asked: Is Linseed plant a cereal ?

No. Linseed comes from the flax plant, which is not a grass or a cereal. The seed can be correctly called a grain, though. hajhouse 20:12, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Problems with Grains

Shouldn't there be a section that discusses the problems with grains as a food? For instance, brain disorders such as autism are the result of having a damaged digestive system, which is caused by certain properties of grains. I'm currently on a diet that restricts any grain or sugar or starch due to my having a rather disorganized brain. Can't there be a section here that discusses these things? Scorpionman 19:02, 13 September 2006 (UTC) oke

[edit] Cerealicious

Anybody else think the disambiguation link to Cerealicious is unnecessary? -- ßottesiηi (talk) 02:29, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Seems that way to me, too. Waitak 03:21, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm going to agree and remove the link, and add a little detail to the link in the "See Also" section. 66.23.230.6 01:57, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
Not logged in, my bad. \/\/slack (talk) 01:58, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for removing it from the dablink. My bad. Berserkerz Crit 15:04, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cerealicious on See also

Please do not remove the link because it is a legitimate article properly placed there by the editors above because of its relevance. Discuss here if and why you would remove it (addressed to Waitak). Berserkerz Crit 15:04, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

The reason why Cerealicious keeps getting removed is that it has nothing to do with the subject of the article! This article isn't about breakfast cereal. It's about parts of certain plants that share certain characteristics. I don't question that Cerealicious is a legitimate article, and it'd make a fine addition to Breakfast cereal, but unless you can show what the relationship is between that article and the subject of this one, it doesn't belong here, sorry. Tell us what you believe the relevance to be, if you disagree! Waitak 03:02, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
Took you long enough to reply hehe. Yeah yeah I got it after you removed it for the 2nd time, seeing the logic of the removal myself. Continue editing good. =) Berserkerz Crit 11:55, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cereal (Canada)

I'm searching for the Canadian town Cereal. Maybe it's smart to make another page with disambugations.

[edit] Amaranth

On certain wikipedia pages, amaranth is listed as a cereal grain (e.g. "people around the world value amaranths as leaf vegetables, cereals and ornamentals." taken from: Amaranth, see also: Grain amaranth), but on other pages (Pseudocereal) it says that amaranth is not a true cereal because it is not a grass. This inconsistency should be corrected. I'm no botanist, but amaranth certainly doesn't look like a grass, and other webpages (chetday.com and waltonfeed.com) also list it as an herb or pseudocereal.--Knobula (talk) 20:06, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal--Grain Crops

I'm new to editing and talk pages, so please forgive any breaches of etiquette or process... I am a botanist and I work with grain crops. To bring this topic closer to the conventions used in agronomy, I suggest the following:

1. Rename the page Cereal and Pseudocereal Crops. This addresses the concerns raised above about cereal vs cereals and cereal grains vs. breakfast cereals.

2. Create a new page called Grain Crops. There are many grains that are not cereals...but all cereals are grains. Major subcategories of grains include Cereal& Pseudocereal Crops (grown mainly for starch), Oilseed Crops (grown mainly for oil), Pulse Crops (grown mainly for protein). Each of these should have its own page.

3. A minor thing: it sounds unnatural, but in the list of major cereals, "oats" should be "oat." "Millets" is correct because there are several kinds. Only one kind of oat is being listed here and grammatically, oat is the correct singular form of the word.

If there are no objections in the next week or so, I'll attempt to do what I've suggested.Desmanthus4food (talk) 15:33, 31 March 2008 (UTC)