Comment by hedora | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hedora | Hacker News Reader

It’s interesting that there is an uptick in private label brands.

The only options I can find that are not loaded with glyphosate, sugar or salt, and that also still have fiber in them are private label or from companies not included on the graph.

Post, General Mills, and Kellogs don’t sell organic options with their own branding, so all their stuff has glyphosate applied at harvest (search for: round up drying agent)

Kellogs owns Kashi which (I think is still organic), and the local stores don’t carry Kashi stuff that meets my requirements any more.

The manufacturers with reasonable offerings that I know of are: Amazon (365 whole foods market brand), nature’s path (privately held) food for life (38 employees; independent), and probably trader joes.

They all would either be excluded from the analysis in the article or put under “private label” which is increasing slightly over time.

However, their combined marketing budget is some tiny fraction of the companies pumping out unhealthy garbage.

Maybe if finding non-terrible cereal wasn’t a complicated project, then sales would start ticking back up.

Just go straight to the source and eat oatmeal. It’s nutritious, delicious (give it some time), and affordable. Cut out the corporate middle men from your consumption of abundant and cheap whole grains!

Goodness I’ve tried it so many times, even cheating and putting a little maple syrup in it, granola, cinnamon. Still can’t stand it. Reminds me of the gloop they eat in the matrix. I wish I liked it. Do you eat it plain?

Drop in some fresh berries or other fruit. Also see the so called "overnight oats" (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7Soc8B_zX-E or one of https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yenZLqXAzng, sarcasm warning) peanut butter banana works well and there are other combinations.

Rolled oats for sure can be like that.

Have you tried steel-cut oats? They are wonderfully chewy [0]. I usually mix a little rolled oats into some steel cut.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel-cut_oats

I make it into granola. It really doesn't take very long and you can vary the flavor to your liking.

Or something like oat flour pancakes. You can even make a bunch ahead of time, freeze them, then reheat in a toaster in the morning.

I have oatmeal with dried fruit almost every day. The less processed the oats the better. I like steel cut or rolled oats with boiling water poured on it. Cooking for a long time makes it gloopy. Just need to rehydrate the oats.

I tend not to eat breakfast, but working from home, making nice oatmeal for lunch is easy and very filling -- I never need to snack before end of work and dinner. I'm sure for most people who do like to eat breakfast, it would work great as a breakfast. Everything is available at Costco in shelf/freezer-stable bulk quantities for quite cheap and at good quality, and it takes 5 minutes to make, which primarily consists of opening and closing bags, and cleaning the pot at the end -- the "cooking" is entirely passive:

- 1/4 cup sprouted oats

- bit less than a handful of frozen mango, frozen strawberries, 1 banana

- small amount of goji berries

- 1 tbsp ground flax

- 1/3 tbsp cinnamon

- 1 cup water

Stir to mix and then pressure cook in instant pot for 10 minutes. Prepare large eating bowl with:

- 1/2 cup frozen blueberries

- 1/2 cup walnuts

Pour porridge on top and mix (the frozen berries will defrost and bring everything to almost a good eating temperature, but leaving enough time to clean the pot before it has truly cooled enough). I guessed on a few measurements since I only really measure the oats, water, and powdered ingredients and eyeball everything else. Easy to adapt for >1 person.

I'd never bother trying to find a "healthy" cereal in a box as long as I had access to basic cooking and food storage facilities.

Instead of cooking them soak the oats in milk overnight. That is really a game changer.

I used to be like that. Cooking in milk instead of water made the difference for me.

I use regular rolled oats with 2 parts milk, 2 parts water and 1 part heavy cream.

Try savory oats. I cook mine with curry and adobe, a little olive oil, nutritional yeast, chopped garlic, topped with chili crisp and a fried egg. Usually on top of a bed of sprouts or shredded red cabbage.

I know these are all words, but its arrangement in a culinary sense is so unfamiliar I would assume this was output from the neo-markov chain-gang.

im sure its good though.

I find puffed grains or fruit-free muesli to be much more palatable. They’re basically the same thing (though sourced from other grains.).

I can’t get over oatmeal’s texture.

Try other grains besides oats. Barley, rye (flakes), spelt, triticale, buckwheat groats. I mix a few with sunflower seeds and various dried fruits into a large batch of muesli that I eat raw. But it makes a great “oatmeal” too if cooked or soaked the night previous. Plain oats is so bland.

Don't even cook them or use milk. Finely cut oats, in cold water with a small quantity of raisins: "Oats and raisins". Let it soak a little to wet and soften, but not enough to turn it into high viscosity gloop like when cooked.

I know you're getting a bunch of suggestions but I'm going to throw in my stupid simple approach that I've loved.

First, if you don't like the texture, as others have suggested, go with steel cut oats or whole oats (I always get Quaker whole oats, cheaper than a lot of the steel cut oat brands).

I like my oats savory. I pretty much eyeball everything but I do about a little more than half a cup, add water until I can barely feel it through the top of the oats, microwave for 2 minutes. Then add a little bit of butter and salt, mix it up, and you've got yourself a breakfast.

You can try congee or polenta instead. Or mix in various grains.

I switched to oatmeal about 5 years ago. Has been my breakfast every day. I add fruit, nuts, powergreens, etc.

Here's a trick that I've done in the past: buy a Presto popcorn popper. You can then buy organic grains in bulk--wheat, barley, rye, even oat groats--and pop/parch them in the popper. You get the nutty flavor and bioavailability of breakfast cereal, but no secret additives and a guaranteed clean breakfast. If you prefer hot cereal, you can then mill (or grind) the roasted grains to make instant porridge--just add boiling water and stir. (You can also do the same with lentils and split peas, mix in dried seasonings, and have instant soup mix). All of the convenience, none of the packaging, none of the poison.

Yeah trying to eat food that is organic and not loaded with sugar eliminates the majority of commonly available food in the US.

I think it's mainly because American's (really everyone) is getting savvier about health. 20 years ago, Kellogs could have convinced the public that their cereal were actually healthy through TV ads and such. But now with the internet it's impossible to convince anyone because the facts about sugar are out there and people are changing their behaviors.

If I had to make a bet I'd say in the next decade of so, Kellogs and other cereal manufacturers will kill off most of their cereal brands, keep a few well known brands around, and make a shift to the "healthier cereals" space that's occupied by these smaller players and private labels.

Just today I was shopping for cereals for our kids at French Carrefour. I dont eat it personally, so as usually a bit struggle for a guy in big mall to even find it.

Found normal section, tons of these known brands like Kellogs, when looking at content it was all 17+ grams of pure sugar amd looking very artificially. Huge shelves full of it. Fuck that, I aint going to ruin life of my kids.

Went to bio section of the store, picked up some Carrefour's branded oatmeal with few bits of thin slices of dark chocolate (unfortunately this was requirement), still 10g of sugars IIRC but much more fiber and overall looking more healthy.

Priming from TV ads is still strong, folks buy tons of that crap for their kids thinking how great parents they are (and they drown it with big glass of orange/apple juice, whats better than starting every day with 50g or more of raw sugars when you are 4 years old and weight 20kg).

I almost always avoid glyphosate, too--by almost always choosing the organic version.

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