Let me start out by saying that I’m not much of a breakfast girl.
I mean, you got cereal, which is cold and unforgiving, and better suited as a late night snack if you ask me. (Especially if the cereal is Cap’n Crunch.) Then there’s oatmeal, which sometimes I will force myself to eat because while nutritionally it’s good for you, it’s kind of gross; especially if you make it from scratch. And I figure if either it’s artificially sweetened and flavored, overly processed gloppy glop from a packet or it’s naturally prepared gloppy glop from the canister, I guess I’ll take the gloppy glop from the canister and enjoy the benefits of a regular bowel movement. Oh, and yogurt? Don’t even get me started on effing yogurt.
Pretty much the only breakfast foods I enjoy are the ones that aren’t good for me, and as summer approaches and I go through my yearly ritual of “Operation Fitting Into Shit Again,” it really limits my options. Sometimes I will literally go the whole day without eating just to avoid breakfast, and then 5 o’clock hits and I eat things like a giant take-out burrito the size of a baby. And that is about as counterproductive as it is delicious.
One “healthier” option I’ve found that I do enjoy eating for breakfast is a low-fat or whole wheat English Muffin. Sure, I can deal with that. However, my last trip to the English Muffin aisle in my local grocery store yielded an unexpected and delightful surprise: Thomas’ Bagel Thins. Really Thomas’?
You mean to tell me that I can have all of the deliciousness of a bagel for roughly the same amount of calories as an English Muffin? And that I no longer have to stare with envy at my boyfriend’s Trader Joe’s Sesame Seed bagels sitting on the shelf, because he’s a bastard with fast metabolism and can eat giant doughy balls of seed-studded carby goodness for breakfast? This is the best thing to happen to my waistline since that time I got my wisdom teeth out and I couldn’t eat solid food for an entire week. And Bagel Thins won’t even give me the dry socket!
With an impressive four grams of fiber, Bagel Thins are nutritionally comparable so I don’t even have to feel guilty about replacing it with my usual whole wheat English Muffin. And with a couple of tablespoons of 1/3 less fat cream cheese — because everyone knows that fat-free cream cheese is basically like eating caulk — the whole shebang still clocks in under an impressive 200 calories. Heck, I can even throw in a glass of low-sugar orange juice into the mix for those numbers! Another way Bagel Thins are better than English Muffins is that, for about the same price, Bagel Thins come eight to a package whereas English Muffins only come with six. You don’t have to be a Harvard-educated mathematician to know that eight is better than six.
Thomas’ Bagel Thins are chewy and bagely, basically just like a regular bagel, and are about the same size, so it actually feels like you’re eating something substantial. Unlike one of Thomas’ sad little “mini bagels,” anyway – I mean, what are those even good for? My only real (albeit minor) gripe with the Bagel Thins was that because of their thinness, they unfortunately got cold really fast — especially if you’re slathering it with cold cream cheese from a cold refrigerator. Although on the other side of the coin, I could see the thinness lending itself perfectly as a bread/roll replacement for a sandwich or veggie burger. Quite frankly I’m surprised it took this long for America’s obsession of thinness (models, cell phones, televisions, etc.) to revolutionize the modern bagel, but it’s a trend I would like to see continue.
(Nutrition Facts – 1 Bagel (46 grams) – 110 calories, 1 grams of fat, 0 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 210 milligrams of sodium, 25 grams of carbohydrates, 4 grams of fiber, 3 grams of sugar, 4 grams of protein and 8% iron.)
Item: Thomas’ Plain Bagel Thins
Price: $3.29
Size: 8 Bagel Thins
Purchased at: Supreme Shop N’ Bag
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Low-calorie. Tastes like a real bagel. Only 110 calories. Eight is more than six. Fitting into shit again.
Cons: Fat-free cream cheese. Oatmeal. Boyfriends and their stupid fast metabolisms. The aftermath of gorging on baby-sized burritos.