The Kaeng Reang Cleanse of January gave me a lot of insight into my relationship with sodium and caffeine and general food cleanliness. I’ve nixed a significant amount of sodium (mostly in the form using weaker veggie broth and more herbs, etc for sodium-free flavor and watching my heavy handedness with the salt shaker), but there was one surprising casualty that I touched on briefly: My beloved Kashi cereal. I loved it for its high protein content, but after cleansing and going back to my morning cereal, I realized that I was super bloated all day. I thought on it, and I realized that I had been feeling bloated at some point every day for a while.
Oh yeah, smarty pants BB30, in addition to its high protein content, your cereal is also very high in fiber. Most every day I snack on apples and air-popped popcorn, and as we know I eat lots of veggies. I was even putting fiber filled blueberries in my cereal. Sometimes I would toss a little cereal into soy yogurt as a snack. My belly was simply on fiber overload. Too much of a good thing indeed!
So, I started eating oatmeal in the mornings. I add in cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice (so good) and stevia (and sometimes a banana or apple), and it’s delicious, comforting, and hearty. Sometimes I don’t even need my mid morning snack. I also save at least $20/month. Unless you find a good sale, my cereal was costing between $4-$5/box. Some weeks I would go through a box and half! Now I can buy a giant canister of plain, pure, natural oats for $3 and enjoy for weeks. It’s great! I make it with almond milk to keep my calcium content up (pssst…the only thing that cow’s milk has more of nutritionally than almond milk is protein). Read about it
here.
When warm weather hits in the summer, steamy oatmeal may not be my first choice, but I’m thinking some nice fruit with toast and hummus or a little peanut butter may be a great fast warm weather weekday breakfast.
*I think Kashi cereal (the regular sticks, not the sugary clusters) is great if you need a fiber kick and a healthy cereal choice.
