I routinely used to eat an oat based breakfast, and would then feel as though my blood pressure and energy levels were seesawing around for the rest of the morning. Turns out I have celiac disease with sensitivity to the protein in oats.
Dropping this here in case anyone else has a mysterious and unpleasant reaction to oats.
I did this after it was first posted. My cholesterol is great, but it is a simple enough intervention, I mostly did it for the lols.
Not terribly difficult, you never feel hungry. The worst part was how sore my jaw felt from the excessive chewing of the bulk mass. Which is funny for something so mushy, but my instinct was to chew it a good amount. Also, it is a lot of fiber. Feel like the effect might just have to do with cleaning out every surface of my digestive tract.
Steal-cut oatmeal made in Insta Pot is the best thing in the world. I do 2.5 to 1 ratio. It is important to not let the steam out. It takes about 30 minutes plus another 10 to cool. Set it and forget it. Add raisons and cinnamon at the end. Or, let freshly minced ginger steep with some orange zest.
Oatmeal reliably spikes my blood sugar. Not as much as many other carbs, but enough that I avoid it. Each time an insulin resistant person eats it, it causes a little more permanent damage.
Four out of ten US adults are insulin resistant.
I have no idea how to balance the blood sugar damage with the cholesterol damage.
Previously (30 days ago, 355 points, 268 comments):
Oatmeal has become my favorite breakfast by far. It's delicious and never seems to never give me the "crash" that people describe with other carbs (probably due to it's low GI). Very easy to blend them into my protein shakes after a morning workout too.
I'd like to point out that not all oatmeal products have the same nutritional value. Quaker instant oats might as well be a box of crackers or other snacky food compared to original or steel cut variety.
> Participants followed a calorie restricted plan made up almost entirely of oatmeal for 48 hours.
Oatmeal is great, but a calorie restricted diet made practically entirely of oatmeal isn't exactly a useful determinant.
Is it the oatmeal itself or the glyphosate present in all oatmeal?
This is interesting and useful, but it's worth noting that this is ~1200 Calories a day, so that's a lot of what's going on outside the LDL effect.
I consume these so often for breakfast that I've calibrated the "core" meal many times. Personally I think the optimal amount is less than you would think, to make room for other ingredient pairings like berries, nuts and fermented dairy.
It's not the laziest method but I like soaking them overnight. Without being too fussed about phytic acid in a balanced diet, soaking still improves digestibility and nutrient absorption.
My doctor had me on statins because I tested with high cholesterol. I switched to oatmeal for breakfast. Stopped statins tested again. Totally normal.
i eat an apple with a teaspoon of pistachio butter (sometimes two) for breakfast. If I am still hungry, I eat 150g of blueberries with some vegan organic protein powder (2 teaspoons) and cottage cheese.
How can I tell if oatmeal would have more fiber?
I also eat basically an entire romaine earth at lunch and cooked veggies at dinner.
Fiber is definitely the only things that makes me full without making me fat.
This has been widely known in bodybuilding and powerlifting circles, people abusing performance enhancing drugs eat things like oats to mitigate the harmful effects of the drugs on their cholesterol, and regularly do blood work to monitor it and see that it is working.
Supposedly, eating food with vitamin c before eating oatmeal improves iron absorption from the oatmeal.
Honestly? It's advertising, not biology.
All starchy foods make cholesterol go up, while all animal proteins make it go down, since digesting them consumes LDL. People only campaign against this scientific evidence because there are so many of us in the world, too many, and there isn't enough animal protein for everyone, especially if you focus on economically profitable production instead of distributed subsistence production wherever possible.
Fiber is the ultimate nutritional power tool.
Not only does fiber reduce cardiovascular mortality by 26% (by cutting cholesterol), surprisingly enough, fiber even reduces your risk of cancer by 22%: https://www.empirical.health/blog/dietary-fiber-reduces-all-...
(Oatmeal is high in fiber, among other things, which I think is part of what's going on here.)