Oatmeal was one of the first foods mass- marketed to the American people. Not only were your parents brainwashed; so were your grandparents and great-grandparents. Oatmeal is a terrible way to start the day. It will give you a glucose shock just as any other breakfast cereal. In one study, scientists fed volunteers instant oatmeal every day for six weeks and compared their food intake to a group fed eggs and fruit. The group that ate the oatmeal consumed 80 percent more calories during the rest of the day than the group fed eggs.

The claims that oatmeal is "heart healthy" are just advertising hype. In some experiments large doses of the kind of fiber found in oat husks lowered cholesterol slightly, but there isn't enough of that substance in oatmeal cereal to do you any good at all.