Oatmeal for Breakfast: Zing it Up

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. What you eat in the morning will dictate how you feel when you head off to start your day. 

Skip the heavy breakfast and go with a filling one instead. It is time to take a second look at a tasty grain that has long been promoted as a healthy breakfast food. It is time to put oatmeal (porridge as it is more generally called) back on the breakfast table.

Oatmeal can be cooked in a variety of forms, combined with fruit for added health benefits, and made into snack bites for busy work days. It contains only around 190 calories per bowl with milk included in that count. Not only is this a meal that will leave you feeling refreshed, energized, and ready to get on with your day but this grain is also high in dietary fibre. This means that when you consume oatmeal on a regular basis that it will help keep your system regular. Another added benefit is that the fibre found in this grain is soluble, it binds with and then helps to dispose cholesterol out of the body with each elimination. Way to go oatmeal for giving grains and other fibre rich foods a healthy reputation.

Oatmeal is a very easy recipe indeed. As a breakfast cereal it only takes about ten minutes from start to finish so won't take a big dent out of your morning. This is a basic hot oatmeal recipe:


1. Combine in a small pot one part oatmeal to two or three parts of water (depending how gooey you enjoy it). Most people use 1/2 cup oatmeal combined with 1 cup of water.

2. Stir constantly while you bring mixture to a boil over medium high heat. Reduce heat and continue to simmer until mixture is a thick consistency. Cooking time will be about ten minutes.

3. Serve hot and flavour with milk, cinnamon, brown sugar or whichever other toppings you enjoy on your oatmeal. 

Oats come in many styles so whether you enjoy the taste of steel oats, old fashioned, or the quick cooking variety you can be assured that each of these is going to provide you with a fibre rich meal. There are many ways to transform your morning porridge into a healthy tasty breakfast treat. After your oatmeal has cooked add in one or more of these toppings into your bowl to get a powerful punch of Protein, antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, and nutrients. Now let's look at ways to get an added boost of flavour into your basic oatmeal breakfast fare.

Choose One, Two, or Three Toppings to Zing up Your Oats

Protein
Milk 
Yogurt 
Walnuts 
Almonds 
Pistachios 
Chia seed 
Hemp seed 
Flax seed 
Any nut butter 
Protein powder 
Whey powder 
Whip Cream 
Cottage Cheese 

Flavor

Cinnamon 
Nutmeg 
Marmalade 
Jam 
Vanilla 
Maple Syrup 
Honey 
Brown Sugar 
Almond 
Milk 
Granola for crunch 
Crushed Graham Cracker 

Antioxidants / Vitamins / Minerals Blueberries

Raspberries 
Strawberries 
Cranberries
Blueberries
Raisins 
Peach chunks or preserves 
Apricots diced or preserves 
Apple chunks 
Sliced Banana 
Chocolate Chips 
Cocoa powder

Eating a Healthy Breakfast is so Very Important

We are an enlightened society so we should know which foods are good for us and which ones aren't which means that our lax eating habits are more a matter of changing behaviours. Adding oatmeal into your diet a few meals each week can work wonders for your heart and waistline.

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day and yet millions of people each day still rush through their morning and don't take that all important few minutes each day to consume it. Other folks opt for the old fashioned all American breakfast like mom would have fed dad each morning and that we were taught as kids was a healthy way to start the work day.

Don't get me wrong, I love my bacon as much as the next girl but life is all about balance. Consuming a daily breakfast containing two eggs, two slices of bacon, and toast with butter is a future heart attack just waiting for a place to happen. Don't even let get me started on a bacon, pancakes, butter and syrup breakfast. It is a meal that is going to leave you feeling sludgy for the better part of the morning while your body works to digest that heavy influx of sugar and carbs. Eeeek! I can feel my arteries cringing as I type.

There are many ways to get the goodness of oatmeal into your diet. oatmeal is tasty as a granola snack. You can bake it up in bread or muffins or as a dessert in cookies, a fruit crisp, or cake. There are hundreds of fabulous ways to get this heart healthy grain into your diet. When was the last time you served up oatmeal?

Quick Oats or Old Fashioned it is a Simple Breakfast to Prepare


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