cereal

08:10 Mar 2, 2011 

I think most people only eat that in the winter and I have heard "Do you want porridge or cereal?". Certainly, I'd call those mushy C&G baby products "baby cereal". To my UK ears, "cereal" can be used for all hot or cold breakfast foods, normally eaten with milk, that started life as ... cereal crops

06:09 Mar 2, 2011 

If you search in Google "baby cereal site:.uk", you will find almost a quarter of a million hits. The one I opened, from Cow and Gate, lists its Baby Cereals, and many of them use the word "porrige" in their commercial names. One is called muesli. Presumably it is less "mushy". After all, porrige is made from cereal, oats as they are called in the UK. I would guess that the manufacturers want to get the benefits of using the term "cereal", which implies healthy foods, and the term "porrige", which harks back to the good old times...