Beware "Healthy" Oatmeal from Fast Food Providers

Oatmeal is good but as this piece in the NY TImes “How to Make Oatmeal . . . Wrong” Mark Bittman rightly outs McDonald (amongst many others) for the abuse of the product to sell their unhealthy products

Like so many other venerable foods, oatmeal has been roundly abused by food marketers for more than 40 years. Take, for example, Quaker Strawberries and Cream Instant Oatmeal, which contains no strawberries, no cream, 12 times the sugars of Quaker Old Fashioned Oats and only half of the fiber. At least it’s inexpensive, less than 50 cents a packet on average. (A serving of cooked rolled oats will set you back half that at most, plus the cost of condiments; of course, it’ll be much better in every respect.)

Oatmeal has health benefits but in almost all cases of fast food presentation the healthy benefits are outweighed by the junk and processed ingredients that are added to the food and the exorbitant price charged. The accurate description of these fast food versions:

A more accurate description than “100% natural whole-grain oats,” “plump raisins,” “sweet cranberries” and “crisp fresh apples” would be “oats, sugar, sweetened dried fruit, cream and 11 weird ingredients you would never keep in your kitchen.”

Better to stick to home made oats and I’m betting that Alton Brown (Good East) recipe “Overnight Oatmeal” will hit the spot and its healthy

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