Food science can’t catch your Lucky Charms

We’ve put several men on the Moon, yet Lucky Charms remain a puzzle that food scientists just could not crack.

Cereal mogulGeneral Mills is in the process of removing artificial colors and flavors from its products, aiming to be 90 percent all-natural by the end of 2016, according to the Associated Press.

Ah, but what about that 10 percent? As one of its first test cases, Trix already presented not one but two hurdles that General Mills can’t quite clear. To quote the AP, “While the company was able to come up with alternatives for red, orange, yellow and purple Trix pieces … itwas too difficult to find natural alternatives for blue and green.”

As a result, new!Trix will be made with four colors instead of six, according to Kate Gallagher, who’s living the dream as the company’s cereal developer. Though, maybe not today.

Even more of a hurdle are the little rock cloudsthey called marshmallows. Longtime fans of the product can appreciate thesophisticated texture contrast they imparted,provided you could eat fast enough to keep the whole bowl from turning into a soggy mess.

But then we’re left asking whether marshmallows were ever supposed to be part of a balanced breakfast. And how much poorer would our childhoods have been with that kind of thinking?

Eva Kis is on Twitter @thisiskis, where she talks about pop culture, cats and media almost as much as food.