I will take you along in my journey into organics one baby step at a time.
I live in a area with pretty limited organic area. No Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, or Wild Oats. Just 2 conventional grocery stores and a SuperWalmart and a Kmart. No farmers markets, CSA, or anything for hundreds of miles...so it's going to be baby steps for me all the way. One product at a time. And if I can stockpile something...even better.
I live in a area with pretty limited organic area. No Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, or Wild Oats. Just 2 conventional grocery stores and a SuperWalmart and a Kmart. No farmers markets, CSA, or anything for hundreds of miles...so it's going to be baby steps for me all the way. One product at a time. And if I can stockpile something...even better.
Natures Path Optimum Zen Cereal (Cranberry Ginger)
Posted 03-21-2008 at 01:58 AM by queenofthehivemomof5
Picked up a box of Natures Path Optimum Zen Cereal in the Cranberry Orange flavor because it was marked down due to a dent in the box (I don't care if the box is dented!) priced at $1.50 I figured that it would be a good choice to try and blog about in my quest for organic products.
The ingredient list looked OK with everything in plain, understandable English:
Organic brown rice flour, organic evaporated cane juice, organic rolled oats, organic wheat bran, organic sweetened dried cranberries (organic cranberries, organic evaporated cane juice), organic whole wheat meal, organic soy flour, organic whole oat flour, organic oat bran, inulin, organic soy oil, organic soy fiber, organic molasses, organic barley malt extract, organic yellow corn flour, organic whole millet, organic oat syrup solids, sea salt, organic quinoa, organic ginger, organic buckwheat flour, organic barley flour, organic rice bran extract, organic cinnamon, tocopherols (natural vitamin E), organic cloves, organic nutmeg.
Brought it home and put it on the cereal shelf thinking that once the box of Kellogg's Shredded Wheat was gone that we would open this one and give it try. Well my family can eat a box of cereal in a day easily so it was not long before the Shredded Wheat was gone and it was time to open the new cereal.
A test of a good cereal for us is if the whole family will eat it. I usually like unsweetened cereal and am the only person that like Grape Nuts and Raisin Bran. The rest of the family prefers the sugar laden junk or the healthy stuff with some sugar on it.
So we opened the new cereal. Parker (5) was excited because he likes cranberries. He also likes to read the box so he knew without me telling him that there was cranberries in it. So we poured some bowls of cereal with milk and ate it. The kids are cereal fiends and will pretty much eat cereal 24/7 if you let them they thought it was pretty good. My DH did not care for it in milk although thought it tasted OK dry. I on the other hand thought it tasted like dirt.
Yuk, nasty, twiggy, bark, and dirt.
That is how I will sum it up.
Defiantly 2 thumbs down. And a rating of 1 star.
Knowing that my family lives thier cereal I must say that the rest of the box sat on that cereal shelf for about 2 weeks. I contemplated just tossing it. But I hate to throw away food like that. So instead I decided to make a snack for the kids. I filled little Tupperware type containers with the rest of the cereal, added some raisins and chopped nuts and served it as a car snack. The kids ate it. And what was tossed on the floor of the car the Rat Terrier ate it.
I don't recomend this one unless you want to eat what tasted like a tree. Too "Natural" for me I guess....
Total Comments 2
Comments
 | try Optimum Power... and Optimum Fit (or Optimum Lean, I don't remember)... Both still "earthy" tasting, but healthier (when you look at the fat:protein:fiber ratios). I love the Power one- yummmm... blueberries |
Posted 06-02-2008 at 03:20 PM by tagnard  |
| | I agree with you on this product. Got a free box for joining my Co-op. Did not care for the flavor and the little wormy looking type things in there got all soggy and gross in milk which made the texture nasty as well. At least I didn't buy it! Just make your own granola ;-) Yummy! |
| Posted 06-15-2008 at 11:04 PM by Ayanna |
Recent Blog Entries by queenofthehivemomof5
- blog test (11-07-2008)
- Natures Path Optimum Zen Cereal (Cranberry Ginger) (03-21-2008)
- Cascadian Farms Organic Frozen Cherries (02-14-2008)
- R.W. Knudsen Organic Sparking Pear Juice (12-21-2007)
- Free Range Eggs (11-17-2007)
