To surpass cereal, we have to travel back in time to Grandpa's day. What did Grandpa eat each morning? More than likely, oatmeal. Today, it can be cooked just as fast as you can pour milk into cereal. More than that, it's healthier, cheaper, and tastes better.
Let us examine the economics of oatmeal. Three pounds cost around three dollars. Contrast that with twelve ounces of cereal that costs the same price. What are you paying for when you buy cereal? Marketing and advertising. The colorful, enticing, wholesome image printed on the cereal box. The grain inside is worth very little.
Oatmeal's health benefits outweigh those of cereal for the most part, although some cereals are little more than toasted oatmeal themselves, just with a higher price tag. Oatmeal contains the carbohydrates and fiber your body needs. Cereals often lack sufficient fiber, although many manufacturers include sawdust in their product to increase the fiber rating. Look for cellulose in the ingredients. How do you feel about eating sawdust?
Most cereals contain too much sugar and dangerous levels of minerals like calcium, one of the cheapest supplements of all, nothing more than the shavings from rocks. Too much calcium causes hypercalcemia. If you find that you are suffering from unusual ailments, stop taking so many vitamin supplements. You may be poisoning yourself, particularly if you eat too much cereal with milk and pop multivitamins as well. Most brands of milk in the United States already have an added nutritional supplement, vitamin A, besides naturally occurring vitamin C and calcium.
Oatmeal is low in vitamins, but let us examine the so-called nutritional advantage of cereal. If the cereal is ground to a fine dust and subjected to laboratory analysis, it will show the specified levels of vitamins A, C, D, et cetera. This much is true. However, humans absorb vitamins not inside a laboratory, but in the digestive system. Unknown is how much of these vitamins and minerals are in a form accessible to the human body. The cereal manufacturer does not care, but you should. Why not just pop a multivitamin, if you're concerned about nutrition? Why trust a cereal manufacturer to include all of the nutrients you require in a form that can be easily absorbed?
In summary, cereal has far too much sugar, costs too much, and the nutritional supplements are questionable. They may bring a benefit, but they also may do harm through toxicity. A massive experiment has been performed upon a sedentary population glued to television screens.
What cereal does not have is any advantage in terms of convenience. Oatmeal is faster to prepare. In fact, your trips to the grocery store will be reduced, because you will not need to purchase milk.
Begin with a jar full of oatmeal.
This container is for aesthetics more than anything else. True, you could keep the oatmeal in the store's three pound cardboard container, but that doesn't look as nice. The wife or boyfriend may disapprove--and they're right. This simple glass container is not only better looking, but easier to use, because all you need to do is lift the lid, and the heavy jar remains stationary while you extract the oatmeal like so:
The cup provides a measured amount. If you require more for breakfast, put a bigger cup in the jar.
Add enough water from the tap to set your oatmeal floating. Microwave for sixty to eighty seconds and you're done! What could be simpler?
The following steps are optional. You may wish to add ingredients to your oatmeal, such as ground flaxseed, which contributes omega-3 fatty acids, protein and fiber. It is important to choose the brown variety of flaxseed, not the golden, and to grind it in order to expose the beneficial kernel that contains the nutrients. Flaxseed is cheap. A pound should not cost more than three dollars. You should only use two tablespoonfuls per meal. More is, uh, not recommended. Let's just leave it at that.
Many people like to add nuts to oatmeal. Any nut will do, or even a substance that contributes a nutty flavor, such as a seed. Experiment. Get creative. I tried dill weed as shown below:
I imagine some readers will scoff at the notion of dill weed, a term of derision in a non-culinary context. Some other recommended additives are cinnamon, chocolate, pecans, pistachios, and maple syrup.
Try to avoid adding sugary ingredients on a regular basis. Sugar acts like a drug on the brain, lifting the mood and interfering with your brain's internal monitoring of caloric consumption. You will think you're hungry when you're not. I'm not saying avoid sugar in all cases, but be aware of its treacherous nature. If you can have one meal without added sugar, breakfast represents the best candidate. Let lunch be the time of trespass.
If you make the switch from cereal to oatmeal, you will save on the order of ten to twenty dollars per week, and even more if you have a large family. Unknown are the savings in health costs from your improved diet and reduced sugar consumption. Best of all is the feeling you get from making your own breakfast without recourse to a mass-produced, mass-marketed product. I buy generic store-brand oatmeal, because there is no appreciable difference between that and Quaker's, besides price. Variety is obtained by adding different ingredients to the oatmeal, depending on what is available in your area. I have been preparing breakfast in this way for years. Enjoy!
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