Food: Rediscover Oatmeal

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Rediscover Oatmeal
Monday, August 22, 2005

When I was a kid, my mother often tried to get me to eat hot oatmeal cereal, especially during the dreary months of the cold Chicago winters. Unfortunately, I never really took to the bland taste of regular instant oatmeal. I basically refused to eat it, so the oatmeal either was left sitting in the pantry until the next big cleaning and organizing day, or it was turned into homemade cookies (which I most certainly could eat!). So up until a few years ago, I had really only eaten oatmeal cereal for breakfast on a handful of occasions.

Then, I started reading about all the health benefits that comes from oatmeal. Oatmeal is a great source of fiber and it can also lower your cholesterol, making it a wonderful "heart healthy" food and a perfect breakfast option for those on restricted or special diets. When all of this positive research and information about oatmeal started coming out several years ago, I was ready to try this long-forgotten food once again. However, I still had reservations about the taste. Even though I hadn't had oatmeal in a couple of decades, I distinctly remembered how bland it tasted.

So you can imagine my surprise when I went to the grocery store and discovered all the different flavors that instant oatmeal comes in these days! There were so many yummy sounding varieties, such as Banana Bread, Cinnamon & Spice, Cinnamon Roll, Strawberries & Cream, Brown Maple Sugar, and more. There were also very handy oatmeal-based breakfast bars that I had never seen before. For example, Quaker Oats puts out a product called Breakfast Squares. These are basically the equivalent of a serving of oatmeal baked into a square, topped with a bit of icing, and packaged individually for on-the-go convenience. I also saw oatmeal bars that had different kinds of fruit fillings inside them. All in all, I was shocked at the sheer variety of oatmeal products available today.

I ended up trying both the Banana Bread and Cinnamon Roll flavors of instant oatmeal. I wasn't expecting much in the way of taste, though. Once I boiled the water and opened the little packet, I became a bit more optimistic: the smell was incredibly appetizing. I grabbed a spoon and dug into my first oatmeal breakfast in more than two decades. It tasted heavenly! The cinnamon roll flavor really did make the oatmeal taste similar to cinnamon rolls. Hey, I'm not going to tell you that it was as good as having a piping hot roll from Cinnabon, but at least the oatmeal was palatable and easy to eat. Now I am no longer turned off by oatmeal. I am trying to make it a regular part of my breakfast rotation and eat one bowl of it at least once a week.

So if it's been a while since you've had oatmeal, you might not know what you are missing. You'll probably be just as surprised as I was at all the different (and delicious) oatmeal flavors and products that are on the market today. Maybe it's time you rediscover oatmeal, too!

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