Paw Ridge – from Quaker Oats

The family have all enjoyed Paw Ridge from Quaker Oats. We have had two varieties to test, natural (100 per cent finely rolled wholegrain oats) and honey flavoured (with added sugar and natural flavourings).  

My daughter, Mathilde, who at 11 has just started secondary school, has found the honey flavoured porridge to her liking. The porridge is not too sweet, with only enough sugar for it to contain just four per cent of a child's daily allowance. Joe my eight year-old loves honey but was adding extra honey to the honey flavoured porridge! He now has the natural porridge, and adds honey to suit his sweet-toothed taste!  

Mathilde, with her early start to school, has breakfast at 6.30am, so the convenience of this porridge is a bonus. Milk is measured in the sachet and the porridge is ready in 90 seconds in the microwave. She says the porridge keeps her feeling sustained right up until lunchtime.  Paw Ridge can be cooked in the conventional way too. My favourite way is a bowl of natural porridge, a chopped banana and a little honey - delicious!

Quaker is an old name in porridge-making but lacks the zing of other breakfast cereal brands. Enter Paw Ridge, a new way of packaging porridge oats in a colourful box festooned with cartoon characters and activities.

Convenience is the key: this porridge is meant to be made in the microwave, with portion-sized sachets to minimise mess. The box also claims there are "No Lumps!" - essential for those with breakfast-time divas. The swift
90 seconds cooking time needs to be matched by the all-important cooling time, especially because microwaves are involved, but the porridge itself was pleasant enough and lump-free as promised - it would be a good beginner's porridge for children who might ultimately graduate to the real thing.

Our cereal-loving children were initially suspicious, but the liberal addition of mashed banana helped things along. Stylistically, Paw Ridge owes a lot to contemporary animated films like Open Season and Over the Hedge. There's also a stab at early morning interactivity with the promise of hidden paw prints to be found. "Go to pawridge.co.uk and hold [the paw print] up in front of a webcam. One of us from Paw Ridge will appear."

Suddenly breakfast got a whole lot more complicated.

Quaker Oats Paw Ridge (gettit?) porridge is a triumph of clever marketing - essentially it's a neat idea that makes dull old porridge a bit more interesting for today's sophisticated children... great packaging with a load of characters, clever copy, an involving little website while all along not that disimilar to their Oats So Simple product, I suspect.

It's really easy to make (individual packets that you can use to measure the milk in - clever), microwave or on the hob, the honey variety smells delicious, it's a good consistency when it's cooked and the only criticism would be that the portion sizes are a little on the small side for my greedy bear.

But basically if you can justify spending a little more than normal then this is a sure fire way to get your small people eating healthily but with enthusiasm at breakfast. Well done, Quakers.
 
Quaker Oats, Paw Ridge £1.99 is available nationwide