Patagonia Provisions Organic Breakfast Grains

A fully organic hot breakfast cereal, packing 400 calories and 7 grams of protein per package, this is the earthiest of cereals I’ve tried. I didn’t care for the taste.

This review is for the Tart Apple flavor of this product line.

Ingredients: Organic Toasted Buckwheat, Organic Cracked Barley, Organic Rolled Oats, Organic Freeze Dried Apple, Organic Nonfat Dry Milk, Organic Flax Seed, Organic Ground Rice Hulls, Salt, Organic Sunflower Oil

Nutrition:

• Serving Size 1/2 cup (57g)
• Servings Per Container 2
• Calories 200 (Calories from Fat 25)
• Total Fat 3g (5% Daily Value)
• Saturated Fat 0g (0%)
• Trans Fat 0g
• Cholesterol 0mg (0%)
• Sodium 140mg (6%)
• Total Carbohydrate 40g (13%)
• Dietary Fiber 8g (32%)
• Sugars 6g
• Protein 7g

Prologue

I’ve bought enough stuff from Patagonia over the years that they keep mailing me the artsy color catalogs every season. You know, the ones showing people that are way cooler than you and are doing cool things in cool places...

When I first saw their advertisement for Patagonia Provisions it caught my eye. I’m a fan of their apparel products and their top-shelf customer service, so I was curious what kind of food product an (mostly) outdoor apparel company would produce. So when Trailspace offered the chance to review some of them I was happy to accept.

Preparation and packaging

Like all the Patagonia Provisions products I’ve tried so far this is not a cook-in bag product, and that works for me as I don’t like to eat out of bags. Preparation is simple and easy: add contents to two cups of boiling water, cook for one minute, cover and remove from heat, wait 9 minutes before serving. In my testing it cooked perfectly per instructions.

Flavor

As noted in the cons, I didn’t like the flavor of this product. It’s very earthy and what I would describe as “weird earthy”. I’ve tried a lot of organic food over the years and many grain type organic products seem to trend this way. I wound up adding brown sugar, almonds, and pecans to make it palatable, otherwise I would not have finished it. I’m not sure which of the ingredients I find objectionable as you can’t really pick them out and taste them separately.  

Satiety

This cereal is definitely filling as it’s a very thick mixture and quite hearty. I felt like I got good energy from it while backpacking.

Texture

The texture is normal for a hot cereal and I had no issues with any of the ingredients resisting reconstitution.

Conclusion

If you like earthy grains and shop organic, non-GMO, take a look at this product; again, flavor is subjective. I must note that even if I liked the flavor, I probably would not spend $7 US for a single package of hot breakfast cereal when you can pack something similar for a fraction of that cost.

Background

I'm an avid backpacker with over 8,000 miles of trekking in the last decade. I've tried many, many brands of dehydrated food over the years. I was sent two packages of this hot cereal to review. I didn't like it and have only prepared it once.