Away Goes the Once Healthy Breakfast

Tina holding up a box of oatmeal on sale at the Superstore.

Enter Quaker Oatmeal Cookies 'N Creme! 

Oatmeal is generally an excellent food to start the day with (or to consume at any meal). Consuming pure oats can help to lower LDL cholesterol (the "lousy" or bad cholesterol), decrease bowel transit time thereby assisting with regularity, can make you feel fuller longer due to the high fibre content (thereby can help with weight loss), can help reduce one's risk of developing heart disease (picture of a heart is even on the box) and type II diabetes, and so much more! But there are better ways to make oatmeal tasty (as oatmeal without anything added is quite bland and boring, I'll absolutely admit it) than to heap sugar and fat into it. Perhaps it was added in an attempt to "disguise" the actual product in hopes that it will entice, or perhaps trick, children into eating it - or at the very least, hope to induce "mommy mommy buy this for me" behavior in children. 

To keep oatmeal healthy one can add fresh or frozen blueberries, or other fruits to it, toasted almonds, cinnamon and raisins and/or cut-up apples, even adding a tsp of brown sugar with milk would be by-far more desirable than this fare offered by Quaker. Buying the quick rolled themselves would be cheaper to buy in bulk than in the boxed individualized packages and would be much healthier! Encouraging families to make their own oatmeal would be in the better interest of health versus encouraging and promoting the consumption of cookies to start the day. Quaker should put more effort into promoting their regular rolled oats - perhaps even team up with a frozen fruit (no added sugar) company. But instead of promoting health, Quaker opted to support the growing rate of childhood obesity.

Thumbs down, Quaker, thumbs down.