The Wholesome Oatmeal by Marion Harris Neil

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park, Washington, D. C. · Feb 3, 1916

The Wholesome Oatmeal

By Marion Harris Neil

As winter advances, the morning dish of oatmeal becomes a very acceptable thing. It gives a staying power attainable by no other food. It imparts warmth to the body, a feeling of general well-being, a sensation of all-round fitness for work.

The quality of oatmeal is judged by its weight and color. The color depends upon the harvest weather. If dried quickly in sunshine while on the field, the color is light, and consequently the flavor fresh and good. If the oats have to be exposed in damp weather for some time, the color darkens and the flavor deteriorates.

Oatmeal forms wholesome and firm flesh, for it has a rich percentage of nitrogenous substance, no less than fifteen per cent. This substance makes the red and white corpuscles of the blood, builds every muscle and nerve cell, is the active agent in forming new tissue when wounds are received, and yields the blood the great bulk of its own food.

The rest of the food that the blood takes up consists of minerals and salts. These, too, oatmeal supplies.

Oatmeal feeds the nerves. Those who use it regularly will not fear neuralgia—often a sign of starved nerves. It contains all the elements that are in meat, eggs, or milk, and that in greater abundance.

Oatmeal contains enough fat to provide its eater with working energy. It is a carbon, akin in nature to coal. There is seven per cent of vegetable fat in oatmeal, a little less than half of its flesh-making percentage, but it is enough, considering that bread has only two parts per hundred and rice but one. Even beans, so rich in all materials for the making of the human body, have only two and one-half parts of fat per hundred.

Porridge made with water alone is a sufficiently wholesome and good food, as will be seen from its high percentages of flesh and fat attributes. Made with cream, it becomes one of the richest of all possible diets, as the bland richness of the little oil globules that make up cream is added to its own wealth of body-forming material.

Oatmeal makes bone. It has two per cent of mineral matter, which is more than either rice or bread contains. It has more than beef, or sugar, or potatoes, but is equaled by beans and cheese. There is a very large amount of starch, too, in this notable cereal, in union with some amount of sugar.

Oatmeal Soup

Boil one cupful of oatmeal in one quart of water, add one tablespoonful of butter, one teaspoonful of sugar, the grated rind of one lemon, one slice of onion, one bay leaf, one blade of mace. Salt to taste, and boil gently for twenty minutes. Press the whole through a sieve, return to the saucepan, add one cupful of milk, and when hot serve with toast sippets. After heating, the beaten yolks of two eggs mixed with one cupful of cream may be added if desired.

Oatmeal Porridge

Put three cupfuls of water on to boil, add one teaspoonful of salt. When boiling point is reached, dredge in one cupful of fine oatmeal, stirring all the time with a wooden spoon. Allow the porridge to simmer slowly for one hour, stirring it frequently. After this it may be turned into a double boiler to save stirring, as it is impossible for it to burn, but it will require at least one hour’s additional cooking.—Marion Harris Neil, in The Mother’s Magazine.