Organic Evaporated Cane Juice

Nature’s Path Organic Oatmeal – a Nutritious Breakfast? [Inside the Label]

October 15th, 2009 2 comments

The days are getting colder and many families are switching from breakfast cereal to hot oatmeal. We took a look at Nature’s Path Organic Instant Hot Oatmeal – Apple Cinnamon to see just how good it would be to start of the day.

What you need to know:

The ingredient list (which does not appear on the company’s website) is short:

Organic rolled oats, organic evaporated cane juice, organic dried apple, organic cinnamon, sea salt, natural flavor.

Only 6 ingredients (good), but why is sugar #2 on the list? (In case you didn’t notice, “organic evaporated cane juice” is fancy-speak for sugar). At least we can understand what each ingredient is, expect for the last one. Natural flavor is a code word for some secret hush hush formula of herbs/spices/fragrances that gives this product a supposed edge over competitors. We’d rather have that spelled out for us too.

The nutrition panel says each packet contains 50 grams and will set you back 210 calories (before added milk). 64 calories come from the 14 grams of sugar inside. Since the FDA does not mandate labeling how much sugar is added to a product and how much is naturally present (through the apples, for example), it’s hard to know the exact ratio. It’s safe to assume though, as sugar in #2 in the ingredient list, that at least 3 teaspoons are added sugar, and not sugar from the dried apples.

From a vitamin and mineral perspective, there are virtually non labeled as present, except for 10% iron. However, that’s simply because many organic products don’t get “artificially” fortified. We wouldn’t get too excited over all those B vitamins that most of us get enough of from other foods on a regular basis.

There are 4 grams of fiber (about 16% of the daily value which is good.)

Summary – we would be happy to recommend this product if Nature’s Path would cut down on the added sugar. Even non-organic competitors such as Quaker Oats only have 12 grams of sugar.

What to do at the supermarket:

Generally, organic products tend to have short, understandable ingredient lists (but not always – we’ve seen plenty of organic junk food). This product has too much sugar than we would like. Look for other options with less than 8 grams of sugar in the per serving (2 teaspoons), especially if they don’t have any fruit inside.

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