Eat Your F***ing Oatmeal

Showstopper of Seattle's long-running cabaret Angry Housewives was, you may recall, a number titled "Eat Your F***ing Cornflakes!" (What, you don't remember? Brain cells degraded by poor nutrition, no doubt.) Anyway, Starbucks is now seeking to recapture the breakfast market by offering freshly zapped oatmeal with a choice of fruit, brown sugar or mixed nuts.

All this turmoil in one store, all these decisions before 8 AM! Pike Place Roast not sexy enough for you? How about a Vanilla latte "with protein"? That must be the proprietary whey powder they get from the mozzarella factory in California.

But Howard knows best. (At least he's not trotting out anything like Dunkin Donuts truly awful eggwhite flatbread.) Then again, if you want cardboard (er, sorry, fiber), there's apple bran muffins, a chewy fruit & nut bar; and a multigrain roll with (yet again, a choice) almond butter or strawberry preserves. But nothing that actually smells like breakfast, because, wouldn't you know, the focus groups didn't like the bouquet of bacon.

Well, turns out you can get all three toppings for your oatmeal; all you have to do is ask. It also turns out that, you know, those smelly breakfast sandwiches? They never left. Having ridden back into town on the horse of purity, pledging to banish the bacon, Schultz changed his mind. Egg sandwiches aren't on the blackboard, but you can get one if you ask. Very much featured, however, are Berry Stella, Chewy Fruit & Nut Bar and the Protein Power Plate.

But who's dreaming up all this stuff? Who's cooking it? And where? Howard's new fitness kick is turning Starbucks into a quick-serve, health-food mini-mart before our very eyes, with more choices than a Cheesecake Factory and all the sex appeal of a GNC Nutrition Center. Makes you long for simpler times, for the days when you could wolf down a 300-calorie Egg McMuffin and just be done with it.

Posted by Ronald Holden at September 6, 2008 8:00 AM | TrackBack

The International Kitchen
Cooking school vacations in Italy, France & Spain.

More blogs about food wine travel.
Who links to me?
var HOST = 'www.cornichon.org'; // Copyright (c) 1996-1997 Athenia Associates. // http://www.webreference.com/js/ // License is granted if and only if this entire // copyright notice is included. By Tomer Shiran. function setCookie (name, value, expires, path, domain, secure) { var curCookie = name + "=" + escape(value) + ((expires) ? "; expires=" + expires.toGMTString() : "") + ((path) ? "; path=" + path : "") + ((domain) ? "; domain=" + domain : "") + ((secure) ? "; secure" : ""); document.cookie = curCookie; } function getCookie (name) { var prefix = name + '='; var c = document.cookie; var nullstring = ''; var cookieStartIndex = c.indexOf(prefix); if (cookieStartIndex == -1) return nullstring; var cookieEndIndex = c.indexOf(";", cookieStartIndex + prefix.length); if (cookieEndIndex == -1) cookieEndIndex = c.length; return unescape(c.substring(cookieStartIndex + prefix.length, cookieEndIndex)); } function deleteCookie (name, path, domain) { if (getCookie(name)) document.cookie = name + "=" + ((path) ? "; path=" + path : "") + ((domain) ? "; domain=" + domain : "") + "; expires=Thu, 01-Jan-70 00:00:01 GMT"; } function fixDate (date) { var base = new Date(0); var skew = base.getTime(); if (skew > 0) date.setTime(date.getTime() - skew); } function rememberMe (f) { var now = new Date(); fixDate(now); now.setTime(now.getTime() + 365 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000); setCookie('mtcmtauth', f.author.value, now, '', HOST, ''); setCookie('mtcmtmail', f.email.value, now, '', HOST, ''); setCookie('mtcmthome', f.url.value, now, '', HOST, ''); } function forgetMe (f) { deleteCookie('mtcmtmail', '', HOST); deleteCookie('mtcmthome', '', HOST); deleteCookie('mtcmtauth', '', HOST); f.email.value = ''; f.author.value = ''; f.url.value = ''; } //-->