Finding a Keto friendly food is like spotting a deer in your front yard; it’s rare and beautiful. Finding one that tastes good and costs reasonable is like finding a unicorn in your front yard.

I found my unicorn–so I thought. Before this miraculous find, I had only dreamed of trying a cereal that wasn’t packed with carbs. One bite of a Cheerio or merely smelling the scent of Kix is 20 grams. Fantasizing about Cinnamon Toast Crunch cost 35 grams. This dream was an impossibility. There’s always the hippie aisle of the grocery store selling Keto friendly cereals, but at the small price of your first born. For ten bucks, the grocery attendant will let you lick one chocolate orb.

Then Ollie’s Discount Store radiated in glory. In-between the dollar-seventy Maple Bacon Pop-Tarts and Spicy Cinnamon Jalapeno Olives, Wonderworks Chocolate Keto Cereal was on sale. Two-dollars and I would be able to take home a box of this luscious drug; a commodity which would change the Keto diet game forever. No longer was I constrained to have oysters and peanuts in a bowl of cream drizzled with sugar free vanilla syrup (the poor man’s Keto cereal). I did not have to hang my head in defeat as I gobbled down a dry bag of BBQ pork rinds chased down with Bullet Energy Drinks.

I rushed home with three boxes of the Holy Grail cereal. Finally, I could snack upon a sweet crunchy substance with zero guilt. Not once did I question the ingredients in this concoction, believing that this was a miracle granted by Jesus himself. I dug my greedy hand into the first box and took a plentiful bite.

Oh no!

To say this cereal is sweet is to say other paradoxes like Obedient-Child, Humble-Vegan, Healthy-McDonalds. No doubt, this cereal was in the same room as someone who had sugar once when they were a kid, but that was the full extent of its sweetness. The raw cocoa flavor harkened me back to the days of Robitussin, but this time I was willingly shoving spoonfuls of the medicine in my mouth. I could have survived that rude awakening, but then the after taste hit my senses.

To this day, I have never kissed a dog full on the mouth in any attempt to experience his morning breath, but Wonderworks Keto Friendly Cereal would be my best guess at the experience.

It was awful, punishing, a blasphemy against cereal across the world. It was so bad that I only had one more bowl after that. I drenched the rabbit pellets in half and half and Stevia, hoping the taste could be disguised. Alas. The dog flavor was still present and her breath was just as bitter.

I have 3o ounces of this cereal in my house. I could repackage it as rat killer or replacements for roof tiles. Who was I kidding? Rats were too smart for that. Of course I am still going to eat it. All 30 ounces of man’s hubris in cereal form. It’s not about the flavor anymore, but it’s about the fact that I could afford a Keto brand within my budget. This victory is mine and mine alone, but who knew the taste of victory tasted like a 30-year-old cocoa pebble found under a vending machine?

It’s another dark day for us keto dieters. In humble surrender, I poured myself a bowl of creamy peanuts and oysters to get that taste out of my mouth.