Quaker Oatso Simple Apple & Blueberry

Despite constantly saying that I’m on a diet, I always eat far too much and my weight hasn’t decreased significantly in quite some time. I was therefore fairly enthusiastic when two of my flatmates said that they were starting a four day anti-bloat diet followed by a proper diet as set out in the book The Flat Belly Diet, and suggested that I gave it a go too. The diet involved cutting out foods that cause gassiness and bloating, such as fizzy drinks and raw vegetables, and sticking to a four day food plan to the letter. After a couple of days of no alcohol and eating fairly, boring tasteless food we had all given up and went to Ben & Jerry’s, but there was one food that I knew I’d be able to keep eating: Oatso Simple.

The diet recommended eating cereal with fruit each breakfast time, and original Oatso Simple was one of the choices. I went to Asda to have a look for a box of this porridge, and decided that a variety pack which included Original, Apple and Blueberry and Golden Syrup varieties of the porridge may be a bit more exciting than just having the plain porridge over and over again. Since each packet made up with milk didn’t include more than 200 calories anyway I decided that it wouldn’t make a massive difference diet wise whether they were flavoured or not.

And it is one of those flavoured varieties, the Apple and Blueberry version, that I review for you today. This variety comes in a white packet with green writing on it to easily distinguish it from the yellow golden syrup and the red original flavours in the variety box, though the sachets may look different if you buy a box of only Apple and Blueberry porridge. On the sachet as well as on the main box it explains how to turn these oats into porridge, and that is to either heat 180ml of semi-skimmed milk on the hob and stir in the oats, or to put 180ml of milk in a bowl with the oats and microwave them for two minutes. Since we have a microwave I have only ever tried it using the latter method, but I’m sure that the taste would be similar whether you did it this way or on the hob. I would say, however, that I find 180ml of milk to be a little bit too much, and whenever I take the bowl out of the microwave after 2 minutes there’s always some milk that hasn’t absorbed into the porridge and so I have to put it in for longer, but if I use slightly less milk then I don’t have this problem. In any case, preparing this porridge is a very simple and quick process once you know how much milk to use and how long to heat it for.

And so, now for the important part: the taste. I have only ever had porridge made fresh in a pan from oats before this, and so I wasn’t expecting a microwave version to taste as nice as the porridge my mam makes at home. Fortunately, this porridge tastes delicious, with no synthetic tastes or textures to speak of. The apple taste is quite sweet but not overpowering, and the small pieces of blueberry found sporadically throughout the bowl are pretty nice too. The flavouring is subtle enough for the porridge taste to be dominant, but the apple and blueberry flavours make it much more interesting than the original version, which is a bit bland to my taste unless you added something too it. It’s not necessary to add anything to the Apple and Blueberry porridge, as it tastes interesting enough by itself, though I have tried adding raisins and broken pecan nuts to it as well and find that the flavours complement each other well, and a bit of extra texture is always welcome.

Out of the pack I have to say that the Golden Syrup variety is probably slightly nicer than this one, but this fruity porridge is still tasty enough and so easy to make that I will award it 5 stars. If you want to make it extra low calorie you could always try making it with skimmed milk instead of semi-skimmed – I’ve tried doing that and it tastes just as nice with either milk. My variety box of 9 sachets cost £1.50, which is pretty good value in my opinion, as even once you’ve added milk each bowl will only have set you back 30p or so. If only I’d discovered them when I first became a student as I could have saved a fortune!