THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, March 11, 1996 TAG: 9603110036
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines
On TV the other morning as I was leaving for what is laughingly called work, a George Washington University professor, Arthur Frank, was telling viewers not to bother to eat a big breakfast. Don't eat one at all, if you choose.
So saying, he flew in the faces of MOA, Moms of America, whose motto is Eat Your Breakfast. It is, they have said for eons, ``the foundation for the day.''
Dr. Frank caught my ear as I'd just thrust in my coat pocket a 3-day old corn pone. To eat one in that ancient state is like munching on a boulder out of a creek bed, but it stays with you. Corn pone is mostly stone-ground meal and water, which sustained Lee's Miserables during long marches.
Do you find the topic of corn pone risible? Not nearly so much to my taste as the fare that has taken hold of our younger baby boomers, namely, bagels. They spread a decade or so ago from New York, Philly and the like.
Dr. Frank, who probably hasn't eaten corn pone or bagel, said there really was no biological need for three meals a day, which MOA would regard as heresy.
My advice to youths is simple: Eat something, ANYTHING, for breakfast. Otherwise, I warn, your innards are left with no vittles on which to work and so they grind on each other, a cement mixer turning with nothing to mix.
That shocks you? I have no idea whether it's true, but it sounds logical, and, invariably, the youth stops in his tracks and grabs a bite to eat.
One item quickly prepared, tasty and nourishing, is oatmeal. Not the instant or even the three-minute kind. I mean the regular variety.
Dump into boiling water enough oats to fill the family, stir it awhile, maybe three minutes, long enough to show the oatmeal who's master; then cut the heat down to warm - almost turning it off - and leave the confounded oatmeal to ruminate and cook itself while you dress.
You may wish to add a little salt and a chunk of butter. If you are going to eat anything as wholesome and virtuous as oatmeal, essentially fodder for dray horses, you may reward yourself with an extrahelping of calories.
A person ought to be saluted for consuming oatmeal. Further, you start the day feeling you have accomplished something.
I hear you saying your children would never eat anything as basically dull as oatmeal. Nonsense! Let me tell you a secret. All you need do is top it with brown sugar, either the light tan kind, which is probably mild enough for children, or the dark brown for the more ornery among adults. As a final lure, let the children sprinkle the sugar, as a dessert.
Your friends will be impressed when you mention you had oatmeal, the regular sort, for breakfast. You will be regarded as a person of substance ever after. by CNB