Score: 2.5 out of 4 oats

Imagine my delight when I opened up the mailbox, exhausted after far too long of a day spent teaching and working, and found a mini box of free cereal from Kashi.

Unexpected, free gifts in the mailbox, mixed in with otherwise very un-free things, like bills and check up reminders from the dentist, are very much appreciated. Just an fyi, friends and other companies who want to send me stuff!

Back to Kashi. I hadn’t bought a box in about 5 or so years, but was a huge fan in college. I liked what the box was offering, what with the toasting, the berries, and the crumble bit. Sounds just like me. Ravenous, and looking for a post-work, pre-Rosie walk, I poured some milk over that baby and went to town. 

First impression: it was tasty, but wow, was it sweet. I’m accustomed to natural sugars, so freeze dried berries coated in sugar felt all kinds of wrong to me. Not just the sugar, but the freeze dried part. I’ve also forgotten that one should let items born out of a factory soak up the milk before digging in. 

Who needs all that sodium? That’s double the amount a bowl of quaker oats yields!

My arguments thus far obviously belong in the store bought v. homemade category, and I almost always adhere to the latter. Fair enough. What you want to know is, in a bind, would I choose this cereal over others? Yes, but I’d unfortunately have to double the serving size, which I don’t like at all. The real caveat, for me, came about 30 minutes later. My hunger returned 10 minutes into a light walk. If I had an equivalent serving of oatmeal, that would not be the case…