Have your had your oats today? (Quaker Oatso Simple)

Member Name: hypno06

Product:	Quaker Oatso Simple
Date:	05/04/09 (157 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: No need for measuring

Disadvantages: The bag is not easy to fill with the milk.

A bowl of porridge sorts me out at all sorts of times of the day.......obviously it is intended to provide a good start to the morning as a healthy and filling breakfast, but I also keep a bowl and some oats at work for an occasional lunch, and have often been known to have some porridge fairly late on in the evening when I have had one of those days where I have been rushing around so much that I have "forgotten" to eat an evening meal.

Porridge is healthy - a slow releasing carbohydrate, releasing energy throughout the day, is low in fat, and is filling. A portion of porridge with semi skimed milk is just 180 calories and 2.2 grammes of saturated fat (less if you use skimmed milk).

It is also very simple to make, and is very cheap. I normally buy a bag of value oats from Tesco, which costs just a few pence. Porridge can be cooked with either water and salt, or milk, and can be done on the hob or in the microwave. My absolute favourite is cooking porridge with milk on the hob, the night before, then reheating it slowly the next morning - you get a wonderful creamy dish.......but of course that means being ever so slightly organised, and that is not so easy for me!

Recently, my husband did the weekly shop for a change, and came home with a box of Quaker Original Sachets of Oat So Simple. His response when I queried the lack of a bag of value oats was that not only were they 50% extra free, but they were also on offer as well.......Tesco obviously over-ordered on this one then!!

Anyway, I have been having this porridge for a couple of weeks now.....

As the name suggests, it is simple to make. Just tear off the top of the sachet and empty the porridge oats into a bowl. Then fill the same sachet with cold milk, and pour it from the sachet into the same bowl, put it in the microwave for a couple of minutes and voila, hot and healthy porridge oats.

Simple........

No, not really. OK, it is easy to pour the oats into the bowl, and there is no measuring or weighing to do, because obviously one sachet = one portion.

The difficult bit is pouring the milk into the sachet and then back out again. The sachet is a waxy paper, so is supposed to be liquidproof and sturdy, but I find it quite difficult to keep it rigid enough to take the milk without me worrying about spilling it - I certainly wouldn't expect a child to be able to do this without spillage every time, and I am sure a fair few adults will have milk on their worktops, floors, or dressing gowns, when making their breakfast - not good. I certainly think that elderly people who are not so good at gripping things or keeping a steady hand would find this difficult.

Once in the bowl, it is easy from there - but then again, how difficult is it to then put a bowl in the microwave for two minutes, and then eat........?

The porridge tastes no different to my value version, and therefore I do not feel that it is worth the extra cost for something that is not as easy to use as it implies. I will be sticking to the cheap oats myself in future, although I will keep a couple of sachets in my desk drawer for emergency lunches at work.

I would, however, consider buying some of their other versions, such as raspberry, or apple and blueberry, simply for a bit of variety.

More information can be found at www.quakeroats.co.uk

Summary: Get the bag back to the drawing board!