Caught Myself Slipping

**I apologize for the wonky direction these musings took me!

I usually get up at around 5:30, and today was no exception. I got the kids up and out the door by 6:30, then took my insulin and other medications. I took time to pray and read a devotional. After a fairly smooth start to the day, I logged in and kicked off my daily reports. So far, so good...

My insulin requires me to wait 30 minutes after injection before eating, which apparently is just long enough for my body to convince itself that it has been deprived of sustenance for weeks and not hours. I head to the kitchen to make some oatmeal. I had two boxes of instant oatmeal in the pantry, one of Strawberries and Cream and one of Blueberries and cream. I poured two strawberry packets into a bowl and added almond milk, then nuked it in the microwave for 90 seconds. When I removed the bowl from the microwave and gazed upon the bubbling goop I thought, "These strawberries look pretty puny. Why aren’t you using real strawberries? And for that matter, why are you using instant oatmeal at all?" That's when my mind went through its Kafkaesque process of chaining totally unrelated thoughts together and came up with Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. This was a book I finished in July of 2016, and its message can be summed up in just seven words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. --What a revelation!

This seems so obvious as to border on the absurd, but he makes the point (and I have to concur) that over the last 60 years or so foods have been largely replaced with "food-like substances" or "foodish products". In the desire to give foods a longer shelf life and to produce them more profitably we have processed them to the point where there rarely resemble anything found in nature. I don’t want to turn this into a book report (although if you are curious, I do highly recommend his work) but his main premise was to avoid eating anything our great grandparents wouldn’t recognize as food. He writes:

"Avoid eating food products containing ingredients that are A)unfamiliar, B) unpronounceable, C) more than five in number, or that include D) high-fructose corn syrup."

So, suddenly my breakfast has gotten a bit more complicated. What's in this oatmeal? I pat myself on the back for having (mostly) avoided bacon, sausage, ham, eggs, and pancakes laden with butter and glistening with syrup, but I think further changes may still need to be made.

Here is the ingredient list for the instant oat meal: Whole Grain Rolled Oats (with Oat Bran), Sugar, Creaming Agent (Maltodextrin, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil [Adds a Dietarily Insignificant Amount of Trans Fat], Whey, Sodium Caseinate), Flavored Fruit Pieces (Dehydrated Apples [Treated with Sodium Sulfite to Promote Color Retention], Artificial Strawberry Flavor, Citric Acid, Red 40), Salt, Calcium Carbonate, Guar Gum, Oat Flour, Artificial Flavors, Citric Acid, Niacinamide (One of the B Vitamins), Vitamin A Palmitate, Reduced Iron, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (One of the B Vitamins), Riboflavin (One of the B Vitamins), Thiamin Mononitrate (One of the B Vitamins), Folic Acid (One of the B Vitamins).

Wait, these aren't even strawberries?? I'm done! Caught myself slippin'. Thought I was being all healthy, but this is not truly the case. I've got a canister of Quaker Steel Cut Oats that I once read were better for me, but I only tried them a few times because it takes 25-30 minutes to cook. Wah! What’s in it?

Ingredients: Steel Cut Oats.

Well, shoot.

Let’s compare, shall we:

​	​Instant Oatmeal	​Steel Cut Oatmeal
​Calories per Serving	​130c	​150c
​Sugars	​11g	​1g
​Fiber	​2g	​4g
​Protein	​3g	​5g

So, as a diabetic, I see that the steel cut oatmeal has a distinct advantage in helping me keep my blood sugar down. I will have to be disciplined and not go for the quicker, more convenient option with the nutritional liabilities. 

Live and learn.