40 Fun Facts About Oatmeal

Which General Mills cereal dropped oats from its name in 1945 after rival Quaker complained?

Cheerios launched in 1941 as CheeriOats. Quaker claimed the rights to the term oats, so General Mills shortened the name four years later.

Samuel Johnson's 1755 dictionary called oats a grain that England generally gives to which animals?

Horses ate the oats in England, Johnson sneered, while in Scotland the same grain fed the people. A Scottish lord is said to have asked where else one would find such horses and such men.

In Dickens's Oliver Twist, which workhouse food does hungry Oliver ask the master for more of?

Gruel is a very thin oat porridge, often drunk rather than eaten. In the novel the starving boys draw lots, and Oliver loses, so he has to make the request.

Which star of the film Cocoon fronted Quaker Oats television commercials from 1987 into the 1990s?

Wilford Brimley landed the oatmeal ads two years after his first leading role, as a retiree revived by a magical swimming pool in Cocoon.

Which soft drink giant bought the Quaker Oats Company in 2001 for $14 billion?

PepsiCo paid up mainly to get Gatorade, the sports drink that Quaker owned, rather than for the oatmeal.

Doing porridge, the slang that titled a 1970s Ronnie Barker sitcom, means spending time where?

In prison, porridge was the usual breakfast served to British inmates, so the dish became shorthand for a sentence behind bars.

Which Scottish dish of oatmeal and minced sheep's offal is traditionally cooked in the animal's stomach?

Haggis owes its status as Scotland's national dish to Robert Burns, whose 1786 poem Address to a Haggis celebrated the pudding.

Which skincare brand founded in 1945 is named after the scientific name of the common oat?

Aveeno comes from Avena sativa, the oat's Latin name. Two brothers founded the brand with the Mayo Clinic after finding that finely milled oats soothed dry, sensitive skin.

The Oatmeal webcomic's creator led a 2012 crowdfunding drive for a museum honoring which inventor?

Nikola Tesla's old Wardenclyffe laboratory was the prize: the cartoonist teamed up with a nonprofit to buy the site and preserve it as a science center.

Which now-familiar package did Quaker Oats introduce in 1915?

Round canister packaging proved so recognizable that in the 1920s Quaker sold a crystal radio set built into the same tube, for a dollar plus two trademarks cut from oat packages.

Which cold-weather month is promoted in the United States as National Oatmeal Month?

January carries the label, and nutrition educators use it to nudge people toward whole grains in general, which can help lower blood cholesterol.

A 1997 FDA ruling let oatmeal makers claim that whole rolled oats can lower the risk of which condition?

Heart disease was the target: the ruling linked oat bran and rolled oats, eaten as part of a low-fat diet, to lower levels of blood cholesterol.

Which breakfast dish did Swiss physician Maximilian Bircher-Benner create around 1900 for hospital patients?

Muesli began as oats soaked overnight in water, then eaten with grated apple, nuts, lemon juice and condensed milk. A dish he was served on an Alpine hike inspired it.

Food scientist Rickard Öste invented oat milk in the 1990s at Lund University in which country?

Sweden is where he was researching lactose intolerance when he came up with the drink, and he went on to found Oatly, the first commercial oat milk maker.

In Britain, which word for a pancake in North America names a baked bar of rolled oats, butter and syrup?

Flapjack means an oat bar to the British, baked in a flat tin and cut into squares or rectangles. Golden syrup is the usual binder.

Which beer style has an oatmeal variety, echoing the oats that were common in medieval European ale?

Stout brewed with oats usually keeps them to 30 percent at most, since too many can turn a beer bitter. In 1513 Tudor sailors refused to drink oat beer for that reason.

People with which autoimmune condition are warned that oats are often contaminated by wheat?

Celiac disease is triggered by gluten, and oat products are frequently contaminated by wheat or barley. A small proportion of sufferers react even to uncontaminated oats.

Quaker Oats insiders sometimes refer to the smiling man on the company's logo by which first name?

Larry is only an in-house nickname: the company says its Quaker Man does not represent an actual person. He was given a slimmer, somewhat younger look in 2012.

Which snack brand, named in 1960 after its founders' four-year-old granddaughter, sells Oatmeal Creme Pies?

Little Debbie is a real person: Debbie McKee grew up to become an executive vice-president of the family firm that put her picture on the box.

In Robert Southey's 1837 Three Bears tale, who ate the bears' porridge before Goldilocks was invented?

An old woman was the original intruder, a swearing vagabond who jumps out of the window when the bears find her. A young blonde girl replaced her in later versions.

Steel-cut oats, chopped into pinhead-sized pieces, are also sold as the oatmeal of which country?

Ireland is where steel-cut oats are the usual choice for porridge. The pieces take 15 to 30 minutes to cook and come out chewier and nuttier than rolled oats.

The World Porridge Making Championship's traditional class allows only oatmeal, water and what else?

Salt is all a purist adds, which is how Scottish traditionalists insist the dish be made. Cooks who want extras enter a separate speciality class.

Which rod-shaped wooden Scottish tool, dating from the 15th century, is made for stirring porridge?

Spurtle sticks beat spoons because a thin rod stirs without dragging, so the oats do not congeal into lumps. Traditional ones have a stylised thistle at the top.

Which Australasian rolled-oat treat was reputedly sent to soldiers abroad because it kept well?

Anzac biscuit dough binds rolled oats with golden syrup. Coconut came later: the first recipe to include it is recorded from Adelaide in 1924.

Which cartoonist launched the webcomic The Oatmeal in 2009 and co-designed the card game Exploding Kittens?

Matthew Inman drew the art for the game, whose 2015 Kickstarter campaign asked for $10,000 and passed that goal in eight minutes.

Which flavor became the first variety of Quaker Instant Oatmeal when it was introduced regionally in 1970?

Maple & Brown Sugar arrived four years after the plain instant oats of 1966, and at first it was sold in only part of the country.

Rolled oats are softened by which treatment before heavy rollers flatten the kernels into flakes?

Steaming softens the dehusked kernels for rolling and also knocks out an enzyme that would turn the oats rancid, which gives them a longer shelf life.

Compared with wheat, oats need less summer heat and more of what, which suits them to Northwest Europe?

Rain is what oats crave, so they do well in cool, wet summers. That made them the staple grain of Scotland, whose cold, damp climate suits oats better than wheat.

What name is given to a whole oat kernel once its inedible outer husk has been removed?

Groat is the miller's word for the dehusked kernel, the starting point for every kind of oatmeal: chop it for steel-cut oats, or flatten it for rolled oats.

Early Quaker Oats logos showed a full-length man sometimes holding a scroll bearing which word?

Pure was the promise, and the figure resembled classic woodcuts of William Penn. He was the first trademark registered for a breakfast cereal in the United States.

The first recipe Quaker Oats printed on its box, in 1891, was for which food?

Bread made with oatmeal was the pitch, a way to sell oats beyond the breakfast bowl. The cookie recipes that Quaker boxes became known for did not start until 1908.

Ferdinand Schumacher, a German immigrant dubbed the Oatmeal King, milled his oats in which Ohio city?

Akron is where he began grinding oats in the 1850s, remembering how he had sold them as breakfast food back in Germany. His mill later merged into the Quaker Oats Company.

Goetta, a German-inspired sausage of ground pork and pinhead oats, is a specialty of which US city?

Cincinnati inherited the dish from 19th-century German settlers, who used the oats to stretch a small amount of meat across several meals.

Which Northern English ginger cake of oatmeal and black treacle is traditionally eaten on Guy Fawkes Night?

Parkin is so tied to the bonfires of 5 November that Leeds came to call the date Parkin Night. The cake is associated above all with Yorkshire.

Which Scottish dessert combines toasted oatmeal with whipped cream, whisky, honey and fresh raspberries?

Cranachan began as a harvest celebration, made once the raspberry crop came in during August. Earlier recipes used crowdie cheese where the cream is now.

Which soluble fiber in oats is credited with lowering levels of blood cholesterol?

Beta-glucan makes up about 4 percent of uncooked oats. Eating oat products regularly lowers LDL, the so-called bad cholesterol, as well as the total.

Unlike the Scottish cracker of the same name, the oatcake of which English county is a savoury pancake?

Staffordshire oatcakes are made with yeast and flour as well as oatmeal. In the Potteries they were once commonly sold straight from the window of a house to customers on the street.

Which Scottish dish is made by frying oatmeal in fat with onions and seasonings?

Skirlie is the filling of a Scottish white pudding without the casing, fried loose in a pan. It is served beside potatoes or used to stuff a chicken or other fowl.

Raw oats are an especially rich source of which mineral, supplying over twice the daily value per 100 grams?

Manganese tops the chart at 213 percent of the daily value in a 100-gram serving, far ahead of the protein and fiber that oats are better known for.

The World Porridge Making Championship is held in which village in Scotland's Cairngorms National Park?

Carrbridge stages the contest in its village hall, where volunteers have run it since 1994. A 2025 documentary film followed the cooks of the 2023 competition.