Do you have any strong food-related memories? I have one with oatmeal. It involves a queasy stomach and … a guiolltine?

One day, way back in grade 1, I awoke to an uneasy tummy, not uncommon when I was a young’un. As an adult, I seem to have guts of steel, but back then … not so much. On this particular morning, no bellyache could keep me from school.

You see, a totally cool, dreamy fifth grade kid had come to our class the day before to read us a book - Madeline and the Bad Hat. He’d read a bit and promised to read the rest to us the next day. He’d left off on a page where Pepito, the Spanish ambassador’s naughty son, built his own guillotine.

Guillotine? I’d never heard such an amazing word! I had no idea what it meant. The 5th grader said he’d tell us more after finishing the book the next day. My curiosity was piqued! Plus, I wanted to see that cute 5th grader again.

So, that morning I gobbled up my maple and brown sugar instant oatmeal and ran out the door. I anxiously waited for story-time (and story-teller), my stomach roiling from running to school with a belly-full of oats. Well, you can probably predict what happened. Nerves + running + big bowl of oatmeal.

My teacher spotted me suddenly clasp my hand tight over my mouth and, fearing a big mess, sent me promptly to the bathroom and then to the nurse’s office. I missed the end of the story, but I checked out the book at the library a couple of weeks later and figured out what a guillotine was. Quelle horreur!

To this day, I can’t think of oatmeal without this memory crossing my mind! It’s amazing. And yet, somehow I still love oats and oatmeal. Among the many reasons to love oats:

via Medbroadcast: Oats fill you up. For all that nutritional intensity, one cup of oats will only cost you 147 calories. But it’s not the calories in oatmeal that fill you up - it’s the fibre. In addition, the grain falls on the low end of the glycemic index (GI), which is a ranking of how carbohydrates affect your blood sugar levels. When you eat oats, your body will digest and absorb them slowly, keeping you feeling full, controlling your appetite, and delaying hunger pangs.

Get the scoop on 6 more reasons why oats are awesome.

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