By Douwe van den Berg
Staff Writer
Oatmeal is the perfect student breakfast: It is very c
heap and nutritious. Its ability to fill your stomach will enable you to keep studying on these cold winter days. Oats can be put to a variety of uses; it can be eaten by itself (not recommended), used as a face scrub, to make haggis or of course to make oatmeal. In this article I will focus on oatmeal. This lovely breakfast can be made by adding water, milk or soymilk. Then you can add a variety of ingredients: make it salty or sweet, add nuts, peanut butter, honey, cinnamon, fruit, yoghurt or cheese. The Internet is full of interesting oat recipes.
Oats have not always been used for breakfast. In the English dictionary of Johnson, oats are still referred to as “a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.” The Scots have spread their cuisine and nowadays it is a common breakfast.
There are three different mainstream oat products available for students. Albert Heijns ‘Basic’ Oatmeal. Quaker Oats and Quaker ‘Oats Express Naturel’. For this review I have tested these different brands and will show the results. All Oats have been prepared with full milk.
THE OATS
Number 1:
Albert Heijn Basic Oats
Price for 500gr: € 0.41
Taste: normal oatmeal taste
Quality: Albert Heijn quality
Ingredients: 100 % oats
The problem with researching and comparing oats is that they all taste very similar. The difference is so small that the use of a different pan makes a bigger difference than the brand of oats used. All the oats looked the same and all the oats tasted the same: A good normal oatmeal taste. Because of this the price becomes more important. The ‘basic’ oats are the cheapest oats available. It was not possible to trace their origin, but Albert Heijn guaranteed that they checked the quality. This makes these oats the best choice for a student’s breakfast.
Number 2
Quaker Oats
Price for 500gr:
AH €0.80
Jumbo: €0.74
Taste: normal oatmeal taste
Quality: ‘Quaker quality’
Ingredients: 100% oats
Quaker is a well-known brand, giving the oats a feeling of quality. The box helps to establish this feeling of quality and provides us with nice information on oats and oatmeal. For example that it helps to lower the cholesterol. The oatmeal had the good old oatmeal taste (like the other oats). Quaker claims to take ultimate care in their quality. I called them and asked about how they guaranteed that their oats had good quality, but they couldn’t provide me with any details. Only that most of the oats come from Scotland and that Scotland was chosen, because they apparently have good quality oats. It is hard to assess the claim of quality and whether it is better than the basic brand. They might, but it was impossible to taste it. Quaker probably gives more a feeling of quality then actual quality. This marketing could be seen last year, when Quaker‘s oats had an “improved taste”, which is of course very special for a product consisting of 100% oats. They still might be of a better quality and the nice box definitely gives such a feeling, but we pay double the price for it.
Number 3
Quaker Oats Express Naturel
Price:
AH 1.89 for 324 gr.
Jumbo €1. 79 for 324 gr.
Taste: normal oat taste
Quality: ‘Quaker quality’
Ingredients oats, stabilizer (soyalecithin)
These oats come with a big cardboard box and a high price. Surprisingly enough, the box only contains 324g of oats. Quaker has introduced two new things: stabilizer and portion-packages. The stabilizer is added to prevent over boiling. Because of this, the oats can be prepared in a microwave on a higher temperature, which will take only 2 minutes instead of the 3 to 3.5 minutes without the stabilizer. A one-minute gain! The packages are useful, because you can use them to measure the amount of milk you have to put with the oats. Apart from these two things they taste the same as the other oats. This new Quaker product looses a bit from the feeling of quality, because something is added to the pure oats. But more importantly this makes it more than 3.5 times as expensive as the other Quaker oats and seven times as expensive as the ‘Basic’ oats, without really adding anything.
To conclude: The different products were very similar in taste, but there is a big difference in price, so for students on a low budget, I would advise to buy the AH “Basic” oats. If you wish, you can put them in a beautiful Quaker box and have the feeling of quality combined with a low price.
Douwe van den Berg, class of 2014, is a Philosophy and Religious Studies major from Ezinge, the Netherlands.
