Why so very much love for oatmeal, peanut butter, and breakfast cereal?

Am I alone in my *meh* for all of the above?  No offense to those who love these items, but with so much food in the world, why those?  They get so much love.  So much.  I don't get it.

Now poached egg on a multigrain English muffin?  THAT I can understand.  :D

Horses for courses!   I dig Oatmeal purely because it fills me up, i have instant kind, lower sugar 110 calories, and i am full afterwards.. most 100 calorie foods wont fill me up.

Peanut butter.. .well yes.. it is a fantasy food of mine, needs to be drowned in melted chocolate though:)

Finally cereal.. Yeah .. 'meh'.. I like it and all.. but it neither fills me up nor makes me feel particularly satisfied... i'm likely eat on munchking because cereal is too light and airy to feel full on .. IMO.

Sure there are better things that those three foods.. but i can still see their appeal.  Of course if we were giving love out to 'healthier' foods.. i'd be giving it to freshly baked wholemeal bread drizzled in a bit of olive oil.

I don't exactly love oatmeal and cereal's just an 'okay' food to me, but I really love peanut butter! I guess it's the taste. :P

Try oatmeal and PEANUTBUTTER together...with some sliced banana mixed in, you will understand. Its like a big ole PBP samwich.

I don't get it either. I would take the egg and English muffin over cereal, oatmeal, and peanut butter (YUCK!!!) any day!

First off, poached? On an English Muffin? I'm not so much a fan of those. I can go for the bread/egg combination - oh, how I can go for the bread/egg combination - but not that one.

I was about to write "I've not read anyone wax rhapsodic over the virtues of oatmeal," when I realized that isn't quite true, as I've even done it. But to address a few things first:

Let's start with Peanut Butter. Peanut Butter is kid's food. When we're kids, we're forced it, so it becomes an automatic comfort food to a lot of people.

Oatmeal has a lot of virtues. It's warm, filling, and obnoxiously healthy.

Cereal? I don't count, because saying "breakfast cereal" is like saying you like books that somehow involve people. It's a broad category.

But here's the thing.

A lot of people like to sing the praises of organic/natural for its health. Some do so for its taste, but I challenge anyone to discern a store-purchased organic tomato from a store-purchased conventional one. But, oatmeal and peanut butter are the prime examples for me of foodstuffs that worked this way.

I detested peanut butter, even as a child. Oatmeal was treated as a vehicle for condiments. Then I tried the real stuff. That makes a world of difference. THat's the stuff worth singing praises of. And once you have that taste memory of how it's supposed to be when, you know, actually tasty, the cheaper stuff tastes better too.

No offense taken! Personally, I like savory foods better than sweets, but I have to have my peanut butter once in a while.  I do eat oatmeal because I make it creamy in milk, I like the taste and it's a good breakfast, but I'd rather have a spicy fritatta.  Poached egg is too bland, but it's good for you.

Of course there is always Asian peanut sauce to toss into noodles - plain peanut butter (no sugar added is best), soy sauce, lime juice, some grated fresh ginger and fresh garlic, a drizzle of honey or some other sweet ingredient, and a shot of hot sauce or those tiny red chiles, all stirred together until creamy.  Toss with hot noodles and throw in sliced scallions, fresh bean sprouts and lots of chopped peanuts.  Heaven in a bowl!

I agree that Oatmeal is one of the few 100+ calorie meals that will fill me up AND keep me full.  But it's not the oatmeal that is so great, it's what you put in it (brown sugar, raisins, honey, cinnamon, etc. - whatever you like)

Peanut Butter alone does nothing for me - add it to an ounce of extra dark chocolate and you have a tiny dessert that will satisfy you as much as a big piece of chocolate cake.  Or add it to a small apple and it's a filling snack that will get you through the afternoon, plus you are lowering your carbs by substituting the apple for crackers.

Cereal - take it or leave it depending on the brand but it makes for a good low calorie snack in the evenings.  As a breakfast it will only keep me full for a couple of hours or I end up having 3 or 4 servings worth. 

I'm not a huge oatmeal fan but I do eat it every now and again for breakfast, I'm kind of neutral towards it, I'd rather have a piece of toast with vegemite (I think you can only get vegemite here in NZ so you probably don't know what I'm talking about - but it's delicious...)

Peanut butter...don't remember the last time I ate it...it's okay though

And cereal....meh

The category they all fall in is 'nursery food'.... kids' stuff. Simple things with simple flavours that people have good associations with and have probably eaten all their life.  Other candidates ... baked beans, custard, rice pudding. They're also quite lazy foods... doesn't take long to splash milk on some cereal or unscrew a peanut butter jar.