Oatmeal: Then and Now...

As a child I remember mornings of waking up to the sweet smell of oatmeal that had been cooked on the stove by my grandmother just to get me out of bed. Looking at the ingredients now I find a claim on the cylindrical containment unit to read “Ingredients 100% NATURAL WHOLE GRAIN QUAKER QUALITY ROLLED OATS.” As a health concerned consumer now I appreciate this information and value my grandmother’s attempt to bring me up with healthy foods. Upon realizing that it has been years since I have eaten the original Quaker® product I decided to look up the nutritional facts for the much more popular “Instant” version of the oatmeal that I have loved since my childhood.

I, being a college student, hardly have time for regular oatmeal or the necessary heating elements to cook it especially if they taste the same. Expecting to see the same ingredients and likely the same nutrition facts I was wholly disheartened at seeing a list of almost twenty ingredients. In researching the topic to find more information on how one of my favorite breakfast foods stacked up against the newer, quicker version. In original observance, the new product seemed promising seeing it has a significant amount of essential vitamins and minerals. Upon further research the great sources of vitamins were added to the mixture in a spray-on form and were the amounts for the dry food. The actual prepared product has less than half the nutritional fact values because the cooking of the oatmeal evaporated the vitamins with excess water. This seemed almost deceitful as far as nutritional facts go but it does state that all facts are for the dry weight of the product.

I believe that as long as I am in college dorms with no time and no stove it may be necessary to bite the bullet on this one and eat the instant version over the natural, spectacular product.

More opinions on the issue.

An Origional Blog Post on the LSC 100 Pollan Discussion

The arguments of Michael Pollan are actually quite pointed and are able to convey his message quite well. Pollan’s opening words, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” seems like common sense to many of us and as we burrow further into the pages of Pollan’s ideas, the common sense just seems more and more logical. As a consumer of a lot of food I am fairly concerned with what types of things I am putting into my body but Pollan seems to bring too many outside thoughts to the front burner of my mind. Our, “food like substances,” that Pollan speaks of are something that I had never really thought about before. Pollan makes an excellent point about the foods that our grandparents and great grandparents ate in opposition to the things we, as Americans, eat today.

Our foods are no longer cooked in chicken fat and butter was totally out for a long time. At least it was in my house. Frying something is like a taboo in cooking these days because of the fact that the food you are frying is being cooked in its own natural fat. Pollan’s argument would support these old natural foods that our ancestors did just fine with over our manufactured, processed cooking oils that are supposed to be better for us. Why is the world so supportive of these, “food like substances”? A logical argument by Pollan would but the blame on the food-marketing companies, about thirty-two billion dollars strong, while it could also be the ever changing nutritional sciences that cannot make up their mind. Pollan is not the only person that thinks this either. Some take another point of view and are still against the food industry. Pollan seems to have done a good job in finding an argument and informing others of his ideas.

Photo from:
http://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/pollan-defense-of-food-cover.jpg