It's cool; I ate Oatmeal for Breakfast.

I’m not sure why, but whenever I think of breakfast foods with oats in them, I have a very real image of myself being warm looking out a window at a beautiful morning landscape, and feeling proud that I am taking such good care of myself and eating so healthy.

I imagine this experience comes straight from Quaker Oats, who has shown me through countless commercials that this is indeed how oatmeal is meant to be enjoyed, and we all ought to give our microwaveable instant oats this kind of reverent ritual to truly enjoy them. And to be honest, I often indulged in this wholesome fantasy, and in fact felt great joy and pride from the first few steaming bites, often drizzled in milk & covered oh-so-gently with slivered almonds and blueberries (ok, I still act out this fantasy, only with a few modifications explained below).

I wonder, as I wander down the isles of my local supermarket, and pass by the Quaker Oats Instant Strawberry & Cream oatmeal, how many other people pick up those boxes of oatmeal and also have the vision of themselves (in 1 minute or less) I described above; being actively healthful & conscientious about their well being by eating wholesome rolled oats.

It has come to my attention that we are very wrong. Sort-a.

There are two kinds of Oatmeal. There are steel-cut oats (of which I am an advocate), and the kinds which contain rolled oats.

Before I get into the difference, from a weight loss perspective I will say that based on calories alone, oatmeal packs a whallop. In the days of our ancestors who were constantly searching for food, that was the point. You eat a three quarter cup serving of the stuff and you get between 150 and 200 calories in (the equivalent of a bagel). The whole point of oats, and the reason they are such an important discovery in our evolution over the last 10,000 years is because oats are easy calories (oats don’t run away) in very small doses.

Think about it this way if you go to IHOP and decided to pass on your usual stack of pancakes (500Kc) for a steaming hot bowl of oatmeal, its entirely possible you are shoveling the exact amount of calories into your body (depending of course, on the fixin’s).

But even if you don’t really care about the calorie/gram of food content, there is another issue as stake, According to Dr. Gundry, when oats are rolled, or made instant, “you have a paper-thin membrane that can be instantly digested into - guess what? Sugar.”. Remember fat isn’t fat, sugar is fat, and a big one and a half to two cup bowl of steaming paper thin membrane is now just a bowl of insulin raising sugar. Great.

If those points aren’t enough to convince you, for your consideration

Steel-Cut Oats: Ingredients: Steel-Cut Oats.

Quaker Brown Sugar Dinosaur Egg Instant Oatmeal (this is the shit we feed our kids, folks): Ingredients: whole grain rolled oats (with oat bran), sugar, dextrose, partially hydrogenated soybean and or cottonseed oil, maltodextrin, confectioner’s glaze, magnesium stearate, soylechtin, artificial colors, blabh blah, salt, calcium carbonate, guar gum, caramel, niacinamide, Vitamin A, Palmitate, Reduced Iron, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride... And the list goes on.

I know that spending 30 minutes to make oatmeal is a pain in the butt, but steel-cut oats have another added benefit. They keep - you can keep them for 5 days in the refrigerator. You can make them Sunday night in a big batch, and take a half a cup to microwave to work every day until Friday. If you haven’t tried the real deal yet, I encourage you to hop over to whole foods and pick some up. Not only are steel-cut oats not going to break down into sugar into your stomach instantly like the rolled kind, and not only do steel-cut oats have the benefit of not having a list of ingredients that is too boring to read, they taste amazing too! If you know me personally, I will happily make some for you to enjoy during the week. Just ask. Anything to spread the steel-cut word.

Happy breakfast, readers!

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Next time on Popular Excuses: Milk.

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Reading List

Dr. Gundry’s Diet Evolution p.104-105

http://www.blogger.com/www.zeer.com/Food-Products/Quaker-Brown-Sugar--Dinosaur-Eggs-Instant-Oatmeal/000022855