Considering Eating Oatmeal For Breakfast page

[XGrains]

On most mornings I eat high omega 3 eggs and vegetables cooked in coconut oil. One or two days a week I eat Greek Yogurt with berries, chia seeds and a little coconut milk. I'm getting a little tired of this routine and am contemplating eating steel-cut oats. This summarizes some of what I've recently read about oatmeal.

"Foods rated lower than 54 on the glycemic index (GI) are considered low. Foods rated between 55 and 70 are medium-GI foods. Foods rated over 70 are high GI foods. The goal is to eat low-GI foods, or combine high-GI foods with low-GI foods or fat and protein to limit blood glucose spiking. Steel-cut oats rate low at 51, so you can eat as much of them as you want.

Oats are also high in soluble fiber. That means that not only do they digest slowly, keeping blood sugar levels low, they also help to prevent certain types of colon cancer. Oats also help to lower low-density lipoproteins by grabbing onto them and excreting them from the body before they have an opportunity to accumulate on the inside of the coronary arteries, which can lead to a heart attack."

What I currently read about oatmeal makes it sound like one of the healthiest foods available. I don't seem to have any sensitivities to grains, and I don't need to lose weight. Would eating oatmeal be a wise addition to my morning breakfast? Are the health benefits of oatmeal, as stated above, true or bunk?

[DinoHunter]

I dont know about the validity of the health benifits stated, but eating Oatmeal always made me feel sluggish & I was always starving within 2-3 hours, & I mean sick to my stomach starving....

Nowadays I have a big breakfast of eggs, meat & some vegies, and dont eat again untill supper time (about 11 hours most days) as im simply not hungry

[otzi]

Mark did a post on oats a while back. What I remember him saying was that oats were one of those foods that just aren't that good by themselves. You have to add butter and sugar or something to make them palatable. They are a starchy grain, and as such, most around here avoid them like the plague. I think if you ate oatmeal a few times a month or so, it would be just fine, but if you are adding honey, sugar, syrup or anything to sweeten it, you'd be better off with a food you can eat without having to sweeten it.

[bloodorchid]

chowstalker should have some breakfast recipes if you want more variety besides oats

and oats are great with butter and brown sugar

[Neckhammer]

Yeah here is Marks post Are Oats Healthy? | Mark's Daily Apple. Basically he calls it better than wheat, but worse than rice.

Personally, even back when I was taught that oats were a pancea of health benefits I couldn't stomach them without adding butter, cream, sugar, and cinnamon to such a degree that you probably wouldnt recognize the mush as oatmeal anymore. Anything that needs that much doctoring just probably isn't worth the effort IMO.

[iniQuity]

Honestly if I was looking for something oat-like I'd make something with white rice instead. I've never had it myself, but I've been told that white rice with some milk and salt is fantastic. I've had "arroz con leche" which is similar, but is a dessert and therefore not suitable for breakfast.

Note though, that no matter what you choose you're going to get a lower-nutrient breakfast, essentially just a shot glucose so I would choose the fat/protein breakfast over either option.

I don't normally eat breakfast (before 10 am, that is) but if I do it's almost always left over dinner, in other words: meat.

Interestingly, before I started primal I'd eat oatmeal quite often, but it's probably the only food I haven't touched since. I've eaten far more offending non-foods (junk food, etc) but not oatmeal, mostly cus it was a breakfast staple and I never ate it outside of breakfast. I don't miss it really.

[solstice]

the problem I have with oats is that it becomes a slippery slope (like with most things non-primal). You may feel great the first few times or even weeks...then you let it creep in more and next thing you know you are gaining weight, feeling sluggish and cloudy headed...and cannot figure out why-- Then an AHA moment happens and you curse the oats!

[Lewis]

What I currently read about oatmeal makes it sound like one of the healthiest foods available. I don't seem to have any sensitivities to grains, and I don't need to lose weight. Would eating oatmeal be a wise addition to my morning breakfast? Are the health benefits of oatmeal, as stated above, true or bunk?

It's OK. I think it's impossible to go any farther than that.

I mean one doesn't want to sound like an extremist. And there were people living in remote Hebridean Islands eating oats and enjoying what seems to have been pretty good health -- although note they were also getting plenty of really nutritious seafood and eating things like cod's head stuffed with oatmeal and cod's liver.

But, well, all they tell you there is that the GI is fairly low. I don't carry GI figures in my head, but I'd pretty much guarantee you that scrambled eggs and spinach, for example, would be quite a lot lower. It's all relative.

All they seem to be saying is that the GI value is not as high as some other foods and that there is some soluble fiber. It's a bit thin to base a claim that they're "one of the healthiest foods available" on. We've already established that there would be lower Gi foods, and that other foods, such as vegetables and fruit, also contain soluble fiber. How about we look at other metrics, such as how many vitamins and minerals there are in oats as against, say, eggs or liver? Then there's the uncomfortable question of how bioavailable those nutrients are.

I'd say have them if you like them. I don't honestly believe they offer a lot. But I think that a breakfast that consisted of something like soured oatmeal porridge (see, for example, Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions for information on how to "sour" porridge and why you need to) with a good tablespoon of butter eaten with a decent protein source -- bacon, say, or smoked fish -- wouldn't be terrible.

[Drumroll]

Or you could just do what I do and eat a big dinner so you're not tempted by those early morning oats. Hell, you're not tempted by anything. Oh f*ck it. You won't want to eat until dinnertime the next day!

[qqemokitty]

Try breaking away from breakfast foods for breakfast if you're bored of what you're eating.

This week on Sunday I made a big batch of deviled eggs to eat with sausage and veggies, nice change of pace.

People (myself included) get so stuck in the idea of breakfast foods, or dinner foods, keeping these things exclusive to those meals and breeding boredom.

Have a steak salad for breakfast. Eat eggs and bacon for lunch. Mix it up without reintroducing questionable grains.