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Comment by LegibleCrimson | Hacker News Reader

It's a stupid suggestion anyway. Most breakfast cereals are basically pure carbs, with nothing in the way of protein and very little fiber. You can get some protein in the milk, but that's not the cereal itself anyway, and also has a surprising amount of sugar. Two meals a day of breakfast cereal is not a nutritious diet.

Once in a while as a treat, sure, given that they're basically crappy candies anyway, but you shouldn't be living on mostly breakfast cereals. The affordability argument dissolves when you're trying to actually get a reasonable nutritious balance from them, given that the average bowl of cereal gives you about a tenth your needed daily calories.

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Depends on the cereal. kellogs is just junk food of course, but you can buy oats, crushed wheat etc in a raw form.

Those are better, but still don't give a ton of calories or protein all said. You have to eat a lot of oats to live off them.

You're not wrong, but this was my normal breakfast (and I skipped lunch) at university 20 years ago:

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=rolled+oats+200g+%2B+50...

(Plus a bit of dried fruit, but I'm not sure how much, this far removed).

That's just two full bowls. Dinner was usually just one pack of instant noodles from Lidl.

At the time, this cost me about £0.50/day.

for some time during high school my breakfast was oats, freshly ground grains, a bit of oil and other ingredients that were available like nuts or raisins or other dried fruits, occasionally maybe also fresh fruits. i don't remember if i added water or milk, probably either, depending on what was there.

the key was that this meal lasted me for 24 hours. so practically only one meal a day.

i don't know how long i did that, or how frequent. i doubt i would have done that everyday for more than a few weeks. more like weekdays with some other meals in between once in a while. but i really have no memory of that aspect of it.

Unless you're stretching the definition of 'a bit of dried fruit' I call bullshit. There's no way you can live more than a month or two on cereal and instant noodles.

5-6 out of every 7 meals, which I think is legit "most", which was the adjective I used. The others were generally cheese on toast. I can't remember how much dried fruit I added, but I think it couldn't have been more than 50g/day given the price of a pack of sultanas becomes significant fraction of the total spend above that.

I made a game out of how little I could spend without feeling hungry, so I wouldn't recommend it to anyone for longer than a university term.

> "most", which was the adjective I used

The peril of editing without checking afterwards. Synonymous with the adjective I used? something like that.

I cook legumes in bulk and freeze them in individual portions. My usual breakfast is oatmeal and water in a pasta bowl, with the frozen food on top, all microwaved together. It all defrosts and rehydrates (rolled oats are sold already cooked) at the same time so it's very convenient.

This has more protein than pure oats, but you're right the calorie density is a problem. A bowl of oats cooked as porridge has about half to 2/3rd the calories of a bowl of cooked pasta, depending on how thick you make it. I usually add some butter or olive oil to improve this.

For years, I’ve been adding fruit to my porridge for extra carbs and a little sweetness. I also add bran or wheat germ for improved flavour, texture and roughage.

Than, last year, a work colleague turned me on to the idea of stirring in peanut butter. It works surprisingly well and tastes good (particularly with banana). I never found porridge particularly filling until I started doing this.

There are cereals with lots of fiber that help save off constipation.

Oats Sarge?

The Horse, The Phil Silvers Show S1E4

> It's a stupid suggestion anyway. Most breakfast cereals are basically pure carbs, with nothing in the way of protein and very little fiber. You can get some protein in the milk, but that's not the cereal itself anyway, and also has a surprising amount of sugar. Two meals a day of breakfast cereal is not a nutritious diet.

Ironically, the most infuriating thing about Kellogg's is that they can get away with labelling one of their cereals (Vector) with a high protein value that comes largely from the milk you're expected to add to it. Prominently on the face of the box: 13g protein. Actual cereal content: 5.7g

https://www.wkkellogg.ca/en-ca/products/vector-meal-replacem...

They can get away with it because it's officially designated a "meal replacement" - so they're technically not breaking rules.

But the stuff is still stocked in the cereal aisle. And anyone would call it a cereal as the term is commonly used.

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