Terrible "health" foods: Instant flavored oatmeal

This is another one of those products that the creators were able to deceive the public into believing is good for them through creative marketing. They took something that actually does have a great deal of health benefits and then kept mixing it up until the most popular versions of the stuff no longer even resemble what the original product actually was.

Oatmeal is good for you. Most instant oatmeal products are actually the opposite.

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We had a lot of this stuff when I was a child and in the time I grew up this was fine. My mother probably could have fed us nothing but bacon and sugar cubes and we would have been fine considering all the running around like loons that we all did all the time. Today's time is a bit different though since children are much more inclined, thanks to technology, to just sit still and do very little.

When I was a kid my favorite oatmeal choices were the same as most other people. I liked the sweet ones because I'll be honest here, regular oatmeal (the healthy one) is extremely bland and boring tasting. You almost feel like you are choking down sustenance rather than having a meal.

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If we look more closely at the nutritional information on the more popular varieties of this stuff you can see that it is absolutely loaded with sugar and they are required to divulge that this one little packet of oatmeal is close to 25% of the total sugar you should be getting in an entire day.

That's not so bad if you regulate your diet all day but most people don't do this and this is where it gets dangerous and deceptive on their part. Also, as someone who has had a lot of these things in his life I can tell you right now that one packet of this stuff isn't anywhere near enough food for an adult so you will end up using more than one of them per serving. I would be willing to bet that this was also intentional on the part of the manufacturer and they are very aware of the fact that people do not stick with the suggested serving size the same way that a bag of Doritos states that a serving size is 8-10 chips. Have you EVER had 8-10 Doritos? I know I haven't.

If you are going to eat oatmeal, and I think you should because the oats are an excellent form of slow-burning energy, the best thing to do is get the regular ones that have nothing added to them, cook them, and then throw some berries on top of it. As long as you can manage to get a blueberry in each spoonful, I find that it kills that bland oatmeal flavor.

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We all should eat breakfast - I know that I find my days are a lot better when I do. However, we need to recognize that the companies that make this easy to make foods are not at all concerned about your health and you have to be prepared to do a bit of research on your own. Corporations are interested in profits regardless of what the product does to you - I think this much is obvious.

_{I made a bunch of mistakes in my late 20's and all of my 30's. I then went on to lose 50 lbs and keep it off by finally making some correct choices in my life. I think that if I can do it, so can most other people}