How hard is it to make a healthy breakfast cereal that tastes good, too? Apparently, it's nearly impossible, according to a painstakingly researched expose in Wednesday's New York Times.

Intrepid food reporter and cookbook author Marian Burros sampled roughly a hundred varieties of “alternative” cereals, and rough is the operative word: according to Burros, many of them tasted like cardboard, or sawdust.