Falling In and Out of Love with Oatmeal

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Lately, I can’t imagine a breakfast more pleasing than old-fashioned oatmeal.  As a kid, I always hated the stuff, or at least what I thought of as oatmeal – instant flakes in a single serve packet that comes out lumpy and runny and sickly sweet.  I’m not even sure instant oatmeal is all that good for you.  Honestly, have you looked at what they put into those packages these days?

Here’s a rundown of one packet of instant oatmeal:

We have our whole grain rolled oats with oat bran.  Now these are not organic oats, so they are sprayed with chemical pesticides.  Here are the top 50 pesticides used on oats in California.  Many pesticides dissipate, meaning while they may poison the Earth they don’t make it into your bowl.  The USDA has a program that measures pesticide levels in foods.  Here is what they found on U.S. oats.

Next we have sugar.  How much sugar?  Well, in a single packet it lists 12 grams.  The new USDA guidelines suggest that, for a 1600 calorie a day diet, you consume no more than 6 teaspoons of added sugar.  If my conversion table is right, there are about 2.5 teaspoons of added sugar in every package, more than a third of the recommended maximum daily intake!

The package I’m looking at is a ‘creamy’ variety, so next we have the creaming agent.  I shudder to look.  It’s maltodextrin (made from corn starch), partially hydrogenated soybean oil, whey, corn syrup, sodium caseinate (a milk protein), sugar, dipotassium phosphate (also known as phosphoric acid, it may inhibit calcium absorption), mono and diglycerides (these are hydrogenated oils), artificial color (why is there coloring in my oatmeal), salt, soy lecithin (which might actually be good for you if it wasn’t processed with hexane), and artificial flavor. 

Most instant oatmeal has some form of dehydrated fruit, treated with sodium sulfite to keep the color.  Not only is sodium sulfite not good for you, it must not be working well because all the fruit I’ve ever seen in instant oatmeal is a sickly whitish-brownish color.  These fruits also have more artificial flavors and colors added, as well as citric acid.

Moving on with the list, we have salt (my packet contains a total of 190mg of sodium, almost 10% of the maximum recommended intake), calcium carbonate, guar gum, oat flour, more artificial flavorings, and vitamins which they’ve added to make the stuff appear healthier.  Sure, my oatmeal provides 20% folic acid, but that’s because it has been added in.  If I wanted powdered vitamins, I could take a pill.

I didn’t even eat this stuff and I feel ill.

Let’s look at the steel-cut oats I’ve come to love as my morning breakfast.  What’s in the jar?  Oats.  That’s it.  This particular brand isn’t organic, but I’m hoping to switch in the next batch.  What else is in my oatmeal?  I make my oats with half-milk and half-water.  I use organic soy milk as my ‘creaming agent’.  My oats are not part of the salmonella scare (some instant oats are currently being recalled because the milk proteins, whey, etc. may be infected).  According to the container, these oats start with 1g of sugar, but mine have more because I add fresh fruit and a little bit of honey.  Today’s oats were “over-the-top delicious”, with bananas, honey, and almond paste.  Did I mention steel-cut oats have more fiber per serving?  It doesn’t have all those vitamins, but if you look at it, neither does the instant oatmeal.  Those are additives.
Why doesn’t everyone eat this?  My oatmeal certainly tastes better.  Mostly it is a time constraint.  Old-fashioned oats take 30-40 minutes to cook properly.  This involves some planning if you don’t have time in the mornings.  You can cook them the night before, then add a little milk or water in the morning and reheat.

You still get all the wonderful health benefits of oats that Big Industry pushes during commercials.  Oatmeal lowers cholesterol.  It is good for your heart.  It is good for your digestive system.  It is more filling than a bowl of cold cereal.  It is cheaper than cold cereal (or instant oats).  Why doesn’t everyone eat organic steel-cut oats?

REFERENCES:
USDA food pyramid
http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/gram_calc.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dipotassium_phosphate
http://www.dldewey.com/columns/monodyf.htm — mono-diglycerides
http://www.chow.com/stories/10701 — soy lecithin
http://www.aaaai.org — sulfiteshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oatmeal
Oatmeal Recall
Science Daily oatmeal health claims