I read a 453-page textbook on oats so you don't have to

Why oatmeal is a superfood.

Post summary

• Online health influencers are back at it, now declaring oatmeal “unhealthy.”

• This post is a sanity check. I’ll explain why oats are actually one of the healthiest foods you can eat. The research is surprising and wonderful.

• I’ll also cover how to make your oatmeal even better, use oats in great new ways, and more.

Housekeeping

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• ICYMI:

  • On Wednesday, we covered the truth about running injuries and eight way to reduce your risk.

  • Friday’s Expedition post examined the lead in plant protein controversy, a warning about rucking, why McDonald’s Diet Coke is so great, and 14 other ideas that can improve your life.

Audio version

The post

There’s a line from Season One of True Detective that’s always stuck with me:

Time is a flat circle. Everything we’ve ever done or will do, we’re going to do over and over again.

Nothing is truer in the world of health and nutrition. Diets and foods swing from “good” to “bad,” and then we eventually run the whole loop over again.

Exhibit A: Oatmeal.

A few years ago, online health influencers worked people into fear, claiming that oatmeal was “bad for you” because it contains phytic acid. Phytic acid is a compound found in plants that can bind to some minerals and prevent their absorption.

The pitch was that if you ate oats, you’d lose your minerals, and your health would suffer. The reality: Phytic acid gets destroyed when oats are cooked. It’s a non-issue. It’s like saying chicken is bad for you because it could contain salmonella. Well, yes, that’s why we cook chicken.

The panic cooled. People kept eating oats. Everyone lived.

But remember: Time is a flat circle. Recently on Twitter, a popular influencer/doctor marched oats back in front of the firing squad.

He said you shouldn’t eat oats because they are “not a health food,” and made three claims: oats can raise blood sugar, contain gluten, and can contain glyphosate residues (an herbicide)¹.

The reality:

• Blood sugar: Most foods—and even exercise—raise blood sugar. Oats do it modestly, especially the plain kind.

• “Gluten”: Oats are naturally gluten-free². Only a small subset of people with celiac disease react to avenin, an oat protein cousin³.

• Glyphosate: The Environmental Working Group recently tested a bunch of oat products for glyphosate and found they had “undetectable” levels⁴.

On Wednesday, we’ll explore why nutrition information is such a damn mess—and how to navigate it without losing your mind.

Today, we’re covering why oatmeal is a hell of a food and why I eat it daily.

Let’s roll …

Why oats are a superfood

When we think of “superfoods,” we usually think of exotic and exorbitantly priced fruits, like acai or goji berries. Or some $100-a-month greens powder we heard about on a podcast.

To me, superfoods are affordable, easily-accessible foods that deliver quality nutrition to the masses quickly and at a low cost.

Oats fit the bill. They take two minutes to prepare, can be found at any supermarket or bodega, and cost about .33 cents a serving.

And they’re a nutritional powerhouse, containing protein, fat, carbohydrates, fiber, vitamins, and minerals.

I dove into a 453-page academic textbook⁵ on oats so you don’t have to. Here are some highlights:

Protein

We don’t think “high-protein” when we think of grains, but oatmeal is a sneaky good protein source.

Oatmeal has the highest amount of protein of any other common grain, even more than quinoa (which is marketed as the “high protein” grain). The evidence:

• ~4 ounces of uncooked white rice and quinoa have 7 and 12 grams of protein, respectively. The same amount of uncooked oats has 13 grams.

• If you ate only oatmeal for a full day—say, 2,500 calories of plain oatmeal—you’d exceed the nutritional requirements for protein⁶.

• Per calorie, oats have as much protein as most nuts and more protein than many “protein snacks,” like Lenny & Larry’s high-protein cookies.

The scientists who put together that massive oat textbook wrote, “Oat protein quality is superior to other grains due to the unique amino acid composition.” This means the protein in oats covers more of your nutritional bases.

Fiber

The public is protein drunk right now. But if I had to forecast the next hot nutrition trend, I’d pick fiber.

Oats are fiber-rich and uniquely high in a sort of super-powered fiber called beta-glucan. It’s a fiber with the strongest track record for heart health.

To understand just how compelling this type of fiber is, consider that the oat textbook devotes four separate chapters to the properties and benefits of beta-glucan—more than a hundred pages of heavily-referenced material.

Beta-glucan works its magic through various tricks that seem to improve blood cholesterol, lipid levels, and blood pressure.

The scientists say that beta-glucan also slows digestion, helping you feel fuller for longer. One study⁷ found that people who ate meals higher in beta-glucan lost more weight simply because they were less hungry thoughout the day.

The fiber even seems to stabilize blood sugar levels to help with insulin resistance, which is why oatmeal is lower on the glycemic index than many other grains and often recommended for people with type-2 diabetes. One review⁸ found “Higher oat intake was significantly associated with lower risk of type-2 diabetes when compared to lower consumption.”⁹

Finally, the scientists pointed to a growing body of research suggesting that beta-glucan may improve immunity and could be influential in reducing the risk of colon cancer.

Minerals

Oats are mineral-dense. They’re high in Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Phosphorus, Potassium, Zinc, Copper, and Manganese.

Many of us don’t get enough minerals. Take magnesium—research suggests that 50 to 75 percent of Americans don’t get enough¹⁰.

To understand why minerals are important, I called The Brain—the great biochemical PhD, Dr. Trevor Kashey. You’ll remember him if you read The Comfort Crisis.

“When people try to maintain their energy levels, they often look to sleep, calories, stimulants, or other sources—and minerals often take a backseat,” said Dr. Kashey. “But if you have low mineral levels, your muscles have impaired function. And if your muscles have impaired function, then you feel tired.” A few words on the minerals in oats:

• Potassium: “With how much sodium our diets have, more potassium can benefit anyone,” Dr. Kashey said. “Potassium regulates ‘membrane potential,’ which means that it plays an important role in muscle contraction.”

• Iron: “Many people, particularly women, complain of constant fatigue,” said Dr. Kashey. “Low iron and chronic fatigue have a functional relationship—iron helps deliver oxygen to the muscles. Oats do more than nothing to get more iron in.”

• Calcium and Magnesium: Most people understand calcium plays some role in bone health,” said Dr. Kashey. “But calcium also plays an important role in muscle contractions. And magnesium helps regulate how much calcium moves around in the muscle cell.”

Long-term human data (what really matters)

Components of food don’t exist in a vacuum. The question that really matters is: What happens to people who eat this food over time?

The highest-quality long-term data we have (prospective cohorts and meta-analyses) suggest that oats correlate with lower mortality and heart disease risk, with no signal of harm.

My oatmeal breakfast

Given all these properties, I start each day with a breakfast of oats. Here’s what it looks like:

• Oats: One cup of dry plain rolled oats.

• Frozen Blueberries: Oats have no vitamin C and little vitamin K. Blueberries give me a boost of both, plus lots of other good things. Nutrition researchers at Harvard say we should eat blueberries every day.

• ​Plant Protein (Momentous): One scoop delivers 20 grams.

• Peanut Butter: Half a serving for fat, flavor, and many other nutritionally good things (the Harvard scientists say nuts are also a food you should eat daily).

• Maple syrup: A few drops for flavor.

To cook this, I combine the oats and blueberries in a big bowl. Then I add about 8 ounces of water (you have to alter how much water you use if you cook with frozen berries), and microwave it for 5 minutes.

When I’m ready to eat, I mix in the peanut butter and plant protein. Then I top it with a bit of maple syrup and eat.

All in all, the breakfast has:

-600 calories
-35 grams of protein
-88 grams of carbs
-17 grams of fat
-14 grams of fiber

Fun fact: Oats are the primary food source for race horses. As Dr. Kashey said, “If oats work for million-dollar race horses, they work for me.” Amen.

A few tips on using oats:

• The less processed the oat, the better. Rolled oats (like plain Quaker oats) and steel-cut oats (also called Irish oats) take longer to digest and fill you up on fewer calories.

• Instant oatmeal packets aren’t as healthy. I’m talking about the packets with flavors that sound like dessert: Maple and brown sugar, apples and cinnamon, cookies and cream. These oats are more processed and contain a lot of added sugar. If you like the oats in packets, many brands make low-sugar versions of their most popular flavors.

• Mix in other good things to your oatmeal. Berries, nuts, etc. (Just don’t go crazy with the nuts, because they contain a lot of calories.)

• Let them sit. I cook my oats anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes before eating them. Beta-glucan fiber takes a while to “set” to make the oats thicker and, in turn, taste better.

• Use low-calorie sweeteners. Use fruit or hit them with some Splenda or sugar-free maple syrup.

• Use a bit of salt. Oats + salt = goodness (it’s why labels often instruct you to cook the oats with a pinch of salt).

• Make them for dinner. They’re great in savory dishes. Here are 15 savory oat recipes.

• Throw them into a smoothie raw. That boosts the calories, flavor, and nutritional profile (I do this often when I need more calories).

Have fun, don’t die, don’t fear real food,

-Michael

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1. Men used to fear being sent to war and dying in trenches. Now, apparently, many fear oats.

2. When they do contain gluten, it’s from cross-contamination in processing.

3. And you can buy oats that are certified gluten-free if you’re avoiding gluten. Not to mention, if everyone avoided foods that someone somewhere was allergic to, we’d have nothing to eat.

4. Here’s their report. Prior tests have found glyophosate in oat products (usually packaged foods), but the levels are two-digit multiples below the EPA’s very safety-first thresholds

5. Chu, Y. (Ed.). (2014). Oats Nutrition and Technology (1st ed., 464 pp.). Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-118-35411-7

6. Many experts think you should eat more than nutritional requirement, so I’m not saying you should actually do this. My point is that oatmeal, as a grain, adds comparatively more protein to your diet.

7. El Khoury, D., Cuda, C., Luhovyy, B. L., Anderson, G. H., Beta Glucan: Health Benefits in Obesity and Metabolic Syndrome, Journal of Nutrition and Metabolism, 2012, 851362, 28 pages, 2012.

8. Wehrli F, Taneri PE, Bano A, Bally L, Blekkenhorst LC, Bussler W, Metzger B, Minder B, Glisic M, Muka T, Kern H. Oat Intake and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes, Cardiovascular Disease and All-Cause Mortality: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Nutrients. 2021 Jul 26;13(8):2560. doi: 10.3390/nu13082560. PMID: 34444718; PMCID: PMC8398256.

9. As with most observational nutrition studies, oats are likely part of—or a marker for—an overall healthy lifestyle. The point is, it’s hard to claim oats cause ill health effects when most observational studies notice benefits.

10. Rosanoff A. Perspective: US Adult Magnesium Requirements Need Updating: Impacts of Rising Body Weights and Data-Derived Variance. Adv Nutr. 2021 Mar 31;12(2):298-304. doi: 10.1093/advances/nmaa140. PMID: 33179034; PMCID: PMC8009744.