Food master Mark Bittman has a column in yesterday’s New York Times about McDonald’s sudden interest in serving “healthy” food.

The fast food chain’s most recent menu addition: Oatmeal that has more fat and calories than its regular hamburger and is more expensive than its double cheeseburger.

S to the I to the G to the H. Seriously?

As Bittman writes, “Real oatmeal contains no ingredients; rather, it is an ingredient. As such, it’s a promising lifesaver: oats are easy to grow in almost any non-extreme climate and, minimally processed, they’re profoundly nourishing, inexpensive and ridiculously easy to cook…Yet in typical McDonald’s fashion, the company is doing everything it can to turn oatmeal into yet another bad choice…’Cream’ (which contains seven ingredients, two of them actual dairy) is automatically added; brown sugar is ostensibly optional, but it’s also added routinely unless a customer specifically requests otherwise. There are also diced apples, dried cranberries and raisins, the least processed of the ingredients (even the oatmeal contains seven ingredients, including ‘natural flavor’).

The article continues, “Oh, please. Here’s the thing: McDonald’s wants to get people in the store. Once a day, once a week, once a month, the more the better, of course, but routinely. And if you buy oatmeal, they’re o.k. with that. But they know that, once inside, you’ll probably opt for a sausage biscuit anyway.

And you won’t be much worse off.”

Check out the article in its entirety on the New York Times website.