Tastefully Tuesday - Top That, Oatmeal!

When staying in hotels, my favorite part about the trip is the continental breakfast – especially if oatmeal is on the menu! Oatmeal is so wonderful for your health. It is an amazing source of fiber that keeps your digestive system moving smoothly, and helps you feel fresh and ready to conquer your day. This complex carb and high fiber food slows digestion and stabilizes your blood-glucose levels.

Oatmeal isn’t only a breakfast food, though! It can be enjoyed at nearly anytime of the day in order to gain its plethora of benefits. If you eat oatmeal at least once a day, whether for breakfast or any other meal of the day, you could significantly help in lowering your cholesterol levels. This is because it contains a high amount of fiber. With a healthy, low-fat diet, oatmeal could also help in preventing heart disease due to the amount of beta-glucan within the oats.

From Bland to Bliss

Oatmeal doesn’t have to be bland. There are lots of ways to spice it up – and some don’t even require spices. Here are some fantastic ways to make your oatmeal even more delicious!

• Fruits and Berries – Combine fiber with fiber for the ultimate healthy breakfast! Many fruits are excellent sorts of fiber, and if not fibrous, then they still have amazing benefits. Fruits and berries will naturally sweeten up your oats!
• Sugar and Spices – These are good when you want a little something more, but just plain oats to go down. Cinnamon is wonderful in your oatmeal, giving it a nice aroma as well as the benefits that come from cinnamon, such as an increased metabolism. If you don’t want the extra calories that come in sugar, then you can easily substitute in a sweetener that doesn’t have the calories. There are a great number of sweeteners out there now, and many that come from nature.
• Nuts – You’d have to be nuts to not try this. Nuts are fantastic because in addition to putting a little bit of crunch in your oatmeal, they are a fantastic source of protein. It’s a delicious twist! When added with a fruit or berry, such as a raisin, nuts are a wonderful crunch to go with the sweet chewy flavors, not to mention even more vitamin-packed.

Just remember, if it comes from a plant, then you'll want to put it on your oatmeal. And if it was made in a plant, then you should probably avoid eating it anyway!

Extreme Oatmeal, FTW

Some people, however, go to great extremes when it comes to their oatmeal toppings. They put such outrageous things over the normally nutritious meal that it basically counteracts the nutritional value. Chocolate chips are included in some varieties of oatmeal, so they’re not all that out of the ordinary. But here are some of the more outrageous toppings.

•  Nerds the candy, not the human variety – aren’t such an unusual oatmeal topping. If you are what you eat and pride yourself on your nerdisms, then you definitely will not put this candy over your oatmeal. All they are is sugar coated in an even more unhealthy sugary coating. Talk about counteracting the health benefits of oatmeal!
• Gummy candies are horrible as an oatmeal topping, regardless of how it tickles your tastebuds. No matter which variety, whether worm, flower, or bear, gummy candies aren’t good for you. They are not only gummy on the exterior, but they are also gummy in your tummy! Why ruin such a wonderful nutritious meal? You’re better off adding a heaping spoonful of brown sugar instead.
• Marshmallows are some people’s favorites for their campfire s’mores, and others favorites to put over their oatmeal. While everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, needless to say this sticky treat is rather counteractive in the work that oatmeal tries to provide to your physical well-being. While oatmeal aids in clearing everything out, marshmallows and the other candies previously mentioned bulk everything together, making a big glob of mess in your intestines.

This isn’t saying that you should never indulge. There’s nothing wrong with treating yourself but the fewer and farther between it happens, the healthier the results. And one of two things is bound to happen as a result – either you’ll appreciate the treats more because you have them less, or you’ll lose all desire for them and automatically choose the healthier options instead.

The Bottom Line about Spicing Up Your Oatmeal

Oatmeal really doesn’t need to be made extreme, even if you don’t like the taste of just plain oatmeal. There are plenty of ways to spice it up or sweeten the flavor, and most of them are right in your pantry waiting to be added. Oatmeal is truly a breakfast that can tempt the taste buds of your entire family. What are you waiting for? If you hop offline now, you could be enjoying a warm bowl of oatmeal sweetened with your favorite toppings in less than ten minutes!

5 Things You Probably Didn't (Want to) Know about Chickens

The question of which came first, the chicken or the egg has plagued humans long before Colonel Sanders began covering these succulent birds in a special blend of seasonings and deep frying them. As someone who enjoys eating both chicken and eggs, I found the Smithsonian's Surprising Science article that listed some fun facts about chickens an interesting read. Here are my 5 favorites within their list of 14.

1. Tastes Like Chicken - Chickens do not only eat seeds and worms, but they have also been known to eat small creatures like lizards and mice.
2. I Believe I can Fly - Chickens are able to catch enough air to fly into the low-lying branches of a tree or escape the boundaries of a short fence.
3. Size Matters - Hens pay more attention to a rooster with a larger, brighter crown. They've also been known to eject the sperm of roosters who rank lower in the overall pecking order of the flock.
4. Name Game - A chick is a baby chicken. Pullets are adolescent females. Hens are females who produce eggs. And if you're from the United States, a boy chicken is called a rooster.
5. Battle of the Birds - The first domesticated chickens were used in cockfights long before they ever saw the inside of a deep fryer. 

So the next time you order some McNuggets or go to bite into a piece of greasy fried chicken, remember that there's more to these birds that meets the eye. Why not head on over to the Smithsonian site to learn more about them?