Oatmeal
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40 free Oatmeal trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Oatmeal looks like the plainest thing on the breakfast table, yet it has a surprisingly busy history. It has been mocked in a famous dictionary, fought over by cereal companies, sold under one of America's earliest food trademarks and stirred competitively for a world title. This quiz covers the grain itself and how it is milled, the brands and commercials that made it a pantry staple, the health claims on the box, and the oat dishes eaten around the world. A couple of questions also nod to the webcomic that borrowed the name. It works for a National Oatmeal Month activity, a breakfast-themed trivia night or a classroom warm-up. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave knowing more about what is in your bowl.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which General Mills cereal dropped oats from its name in 1945 after rival Quaker complained?
Cheerios
Cheerios launched in 1941 as CheeriOats. Quaker claimed the rights to the term oats, so General Mills shortened the name four years later.
Q 02Samuel Johnson's 1755 dictionary called oats a grain that England generally gives to which animals?
Horses
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.
Q 03In Dickens's Oliver Twist, which workhouse food does hungry Oliver ask the master for more of?
Gruel
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.
Q 04Which star of the film Cocoon fronted Quaker Oats television commercials from 1987 into the 1990s?
Wilford Brimley
Wilford Brimley landed the oatmeal ads two years after his first leading role, as a retiree revived by a magical swimming pool in Cocoon.
Q 05Which soft drink giant bought the Quaker Oats Company in 2001 for $14 billion?
PepsiCo
PepsiCo paid up mainly to get Gatorade, the sports drink that Quaker owned, rather than for the oatmeal.
Q 06Doing porridge, the slang that titled a 1970s Ronnie Barker sitcom, means spending time where?
In prison
In prison, porridge was the usual breakfast served to British inmates, so the dish became shorthand for a sentence behind bars.
Q 07Which Scottish dish of oatmeal and minced sheep's offal is traditionally cooked in the animal's stomach?
Haggis
Haggis owes its status as Scotland's national dish to Robert Burns, whose 1786 poem Address to a Haggis celebrated the pudding.
Q 08Which skincare brand founded in 1945 is named after the scientific name of the common oat?
Aveeno
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.
Q 09The Oatmeal webcomic's creator led a 2012 crowdfunding drive for a museum honoring which inventor?
Nikola Tesla
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.
Q 10Which now-familiar package did Quaker Oats introduce in 1915?
Round canister
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.
Q 11Which cold-weather month is promoted in the United States as National Oatmeal Month?
January
January carries the label, and nutrition educators use it to nudge people toward whole grains in general, which can help lower blood cholesterol.
Q 12A 1997 FDA ruling let oatmeal makers claim that whole rolled oats can lower the risk of which condition?
Heart disease
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.
Q 13Which breakfast dish did Swiss physician Maximilian Bircher-Benner create around 1900 for hospital patients?
Muesli
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.
Q 21Steel-cut oats, chopped into pinhead-sized pieces, are also sold as the oatmeal of which country?
Ireland
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.
Q 22The World Porridge Making Championship's traditional class allows only oatmeal, water and what else?
Salt
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.
Q 23Which rod-shaped wooden Scottish tool, dating from the 15th century, is made for stirring porridge?
Spurtle
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.
Q 14Food scientist Rickard Öste invented oat milk in the 1990s at Lund University in which country?
Sweden
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.
Q 15In Britain, which word for a pancake in North America names a baked bar of rolled oats, butter and syrup?
Flapjack
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.
Q 16Which beer style has an oatmeal variety, echoing the oats that were common in medieval European ale?
Stout
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.
Q 17People with which autoimmune condition are warned that oats are often contaminated by wheat?
Celiac disease
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.
Q 18Quaker Oats insiders sometimes refer to the smiling man on the company's logo by which first name?
Larry
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.
Q 19Which snack brand, named in 1960 after its founders' four-year-old granddaughter, sells Oatmeal Creme Pies?
Little Debbie
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.
Q 20In Robert Southey's 1837 Three Bears tale, who ate the bears' porridge before Goldilocks was invented?
An old woman
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.
Q 24Which Australasian rolled-oat treat was reputedly sent to soldiers abroad because it kept well?
Anzac biscuit
Anzac biscuit dough binds rolled oats with golden syrup. Coconut came later: the first recipe to include it is recorded from Adelaide in 1924.
Q 25Which cartoonist launched the webcomic The Oatmeal in 2009 and co-designed the card game Exploding Kittens?
Matthew Inman
Matthew Inman drew the art for the game, whose 2015 Kickstarter campaign asked for $10,000 and passed that goal in eight minutes.
Q 26Which flavor became the first variety of Quaker Instant Oatmeal when it was introduced regionally in 1970?
Maple & Brown Sugar
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.
Q 27Rolled oats are softened by which treatment before heavy rollers flatten the kernels into flakes?
Steaming
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.
Q 28Compared with wheat, oats need less summer heat and more of what, which suits them to Northwest Europe?
Rain
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.
Q 29What name is given to a whole oat kernel once its inedible outer husk has been removed?
Groat
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.
Q 30Early Quaker Oats logos showed a full-length man sometimes holding a scroll bearing which word?
Pure
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.