Remember Alfalfa and Spanky from the Our Gang comedies? In one episode called Mush and Milk the gang lived at an orphanage, and everyday they had mush for breakfast. The caretaker promised that when he received his back pension he would treat them to a fine meal. Finally, the day comes and he treats them to an expensive meal at a French restaurant. Not understanding French, they order a delicious sounding meal and when it’s served, voilà . . . mush.

To this day I think oatmeal is one of the yummiest foods on the planet, but as a child I didn’t know how good it was for me. Many studies have shown oatmeal protects against high blood cholesterol, diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity — a great natural antiaging food that contains Vitamin E, magnesium, iron, zinc, and protein.


Did you know that having a glass of orange juice with oatmeal doubles the nutrition power? Seems there is a synergy between the two foods because the phenols in oatmeal and the Vitamin C in orange juice work together to make LDL cholesterol less likely to stick to the walls of arteries.

Here are three ideas to boost the nutrition further:

• Make oatmeal with Hemp milk instead of water. Follow the same directions
  given for water, just use milk instead. I’ve already told you about Hemp
  being a better source of balanced essential fatty acids than flax.

• Kick oatmeal up a notch by serving it with antioxidant-rich berries.

• Sprinkle oatmeal with cinnamon. Just a half a tablespoon of cinnamon a day, increases your ability to prevent type 2 diabetes.

• Lastly, stay away from instant oatmeal. Instant oatmeal generally has excessive salt added to it, but – as always – check the label.

Besides consuming it, oatmeal is used in many natural skin care products — especially products for itchy skin. Finely ground or colloidal oatmeal can be added to bath water to relieve itchy skin or rashes. Add regular organic oatmeal to your coffee grinder to make it into a fine powder. In the bath it will turn milky and dissolve instead of settling to the bottom. Twenty minutes of soaking will do a body good.