Today’s question is about Kashi GoLean cereal, and where it fits in compared to oatmeal and your common cereals…

Hey I was wondering if you could review kashi GoLean cereal (hot or cold). The nutrition facts look good but I get confused when reading the list of ingredients, which is considerably lengthy. How does it compare to oatmeal or other cereals?

Thanks,
Kathy McGene

Hi Kathy,

Oh yes, Kashi GoLean. I’ve had quite a bit of the cold cereal. I really enjoyed it – nice and crunchy, not too sweet.

It does contain quite a few ingredients, but they are about as healthy and natural as it gets for cereal. It is mostly whole grains with a few additions. For sugar, you’ll see evaporated cane juice crystals and honey. For oil, they use expeller-pressed canola oil. And that’s it.

While no one is going to argue that those ingredients are more healthy than a bowl of spinach, they’re great for a bowl of cereal! The GoLean is way better than common cereal! And the only way to beat it would be to make your own steel cut oats.

Now, I haven’t tried the GoLean hot cereal, but it looks similar – long list of ingredients, but mostly whole grains, and no garbage.

On the other hand, I have tried the Kashi Heart to Heart instant oatmeal. It’s too sugary for me. I swear it was like spooning sugar straight into my mouth!

Why might that be? Well, it does contain twice the amount of sugar per serving as the GoLean cereal line!!

I had these single-serving cups you could add water to and cook in the microwave. Each cup was 200 calories, but there was very little oatmeal in it. But it was packed with 15g sugar, which is equivalent to having 4 tsp sugar in there! I think 1 tsp would have been plenty for me.

For my parting thoughts, I’ll tell you how I view cereal…

I usually place cereal into three ranks.

First is oatmeal, made with steel cut or rolled oats. That’s as natural and unprocessed as you can get using grains from the store.

Second, Kashi GoLean and some other cereals. They have the healthiest ingredients lists, but are still refined and processed compared to oatmeal. I don’t eat these very often any more, but if you need calories to fuel your training, go ahead and eat this stuff without worrying.

Third, the sugary kids stuff. I avoid all of it, even stuff like Raisin Bran, which is filled with added sugar and even high fructose corn syrup.

So if you avoid the sugary junk and stick with Kashi GoLean and oatmeal, you’ll be fine!

I was once a big fan of the fruit and nut bars from the Quaker Simple Harvest line, but you can’t get those anymore, so I tried the hot cereal hoping it would be good, too. I grabbed the vanilla almond honey flavor since it was on sale.

The Simple Harvest hot cereal is a lot like oatmeal, but it offers more than oats. Yes, it’s mainly oats, but they throw in a little wheat, barley, and rye, too.

Ingredients:

Whole Grain Rolled Oats, Whole Grain Rolled Wheat, Rolled Barley, Whole Grain Rolled Rye, Sugar, Almonds, Whole Flaxseed, Oat Flour, Natural Flavors, Salt, Molasses

The taste is pretty good. It’s like oatmeal but slightly different thanks to the variety of grains. It’s extremely sweet, though. The vanilla flavor is overpowering, then you add the sugar and honey, wow! I’m not sure if the vanilla is a bit on the artificial side or if it’s just because of the sweetness level, but the bottom line is – this stuff if sweet.

To add to the texture, there are big almond slivers in there. I don’t really like big crunchy things in my oatmeal, but if you do, there are quite a few almonds for your enjoyment.

I don’t like rye bread either, but I have no problem with the rye grain in this cereal.

Since it was so sweet (and has way more sugar than necessary,) I found myself dumping one packet of this in a bowl and then dumping in an equal or greater amount of plain rolled oats. It was still sweet and flavorful, but not overpowering.

You’d need at least four packets of this in a bowl to equal my typical size bowl of oatmeal. But there’s more sugar in one packet of this than I put in one of my large bowls of oatmeal!

Quaker Simple Harvest Hot Cereal also comes in maple brown sugar with pecans and apple cinnamon. I’d like to try the apple cinnamon someday as I would probably prefer that one, and hopefully it wouldn’t be overly sweet.

Here is the dry mix before adding milk and microwaving:

My final verdict is…

The taste isn’t bad, but it’s so sugary, I plan to stick with my own oatmeal recipe, so I can keep the sugar content in check.

This appears to be slightly healthier than some other pre-packaged oatmeals, but if you’re going to eat oatmeal, make it yourself. It’s healthier that way.

Official website: www.QuakerOats.com