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 a.m.! 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 and 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.

Who's dreaming up all this stuff? And 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.