Oats
Oatmeal is a cereal grain from the Poaceae grass family. It is rich in: soluble and insoluble fiber, magnesium, zinc, phosphorus, and thiamine. The most significant feature in otas is the soluble fiber, which can slow digestion and increase satiety. People who have high cholesterol levels are suggested to eat oats as a daily intake, since oats can bind with cholesterol rich bile acids and assist them to transport out of the body (Harvard T.H. Chan).
According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), oats help to reduce cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol concentration.
If you are an environment advocate, good news! Oats are environmentally sustainable: it assists soil conservation and helps the rotation system (North American Millers Association).
Let’s get acquainted with different types of oats together! (Hanson 2021)
Rolled Oats: The oats are steamed, and then pressed flat to quicken the cooking time.
Old-Fashioned Oats: Part of the rolled oats. They are cutted into small flakes, and have varied texture.
Quick-Cooking Oats: Can be cooked fast since they are rolled very thin, part of the rolled oats category.
Instant Oats: Cookes and dried before cutted thin. Cooks the fastest and can have a mushy consistency.
Steel-Cut Oats: Being sliced by steel blades, looks like normal grains. Less processed and takes a long time to cook. The texture is more chewy since they are not flattened. Have the most nutrients reserved from the original plant.
If you can, incorporate oats into your daily intake. Research conducted in a long period of time (30 days and 1 year) for the effectiveness of daily oatmeal intake shows significance on hyperglycemia control and decrease PPG in overweight patients (Li et al. 2016)
Resources:
Carl Hanson (2021, January 22). Steel cut, rolled, instant: What's the difference between types of oats? Allrecipes. Retrieved March 12, 2021, from https://www.allrecipes.com/article/whats-the-difference-between-types-of-oats/
Harvard T.H. Chan. (n.d.). Oats. Retrieved March 12, 2021, from
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/food-features/oats/
Li, X., Cai, X., Ma, X., Jing, L., Gu, J., Bao, L., . . . Li, Y. (2016, September 7). Short- and long-term effects of wholegrain oat intake on weight management and glycolipid metabolism in overweight type-2 diabetics: A randomized control trial. Retrieved March 12, 2021, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5037534/
North American Millers Association. (n.d.). Oatmeal Research. Retrieved March 12, 2021, from https://www.namamillers.org/issues/grains-research/oat-research/