iirc, from older articles, which differ from this nice result, bile acids contain cholesterol(s) and they're generally reabsorbed in the intestines, so the fiber is conjectured to bind with some before reabsorption, expelling the bound fraction of circulating cholesterol in feces.
this result in the paper is very interesting in the conjecture is that the gut microbiome is altered in a beneficial way, and that the effect (with the resulting lowering of cholesterol) persists for weeks after even 2 days of oats.
Oh boy. Now we’re entering the fiber era. We’re just leaving the protein era. Before that it was the intermittent fasting era. Before that it was the keto era. The low fat era was probably a few before that.
I hear about fiber constantly all of the sudden. You might be right about it, but how do we know it’s different than. All the past nutrition tends?
Idk about cholesterol, fiber is well known to be very healthy. Same for protein.
Losing body fat will often have the biggest impact by far if one is overweight, though. It also stabilizes blood sugar and has a lot of benefits in general.
It is funny how you can break diet/nutrition into generations like this.
I think the trends are a reflection of poor education. Fiber/protein/whatever being important components of a diet isn't new information. But the information is new to folks that never had nutrition explained to them.
Because the trends are bullshit and nutrition is just not that complicated.
The trends are a strange type of nutrition entertainment for people to read and then ignore in practice. There is some kind of psychological comfort in the knowing you can switch to oatmeal next week while gorging yourself at the Cheesecake Factory.
Oatmeal is good for you. News at a 11. We have known this for at least that last 50 years.
I feel like we're due for something really ridiculous next. I've been paying attention to macros, fibre, salt, and having a reasonably varied diet for years; we've done salt, fat, carbs, protein, and now we're doing fibre.
"Eat a varied diet" seems boring but maybe those influencers selling pills made from 500 vegetables were ahead of the curve all along.
Before manufactured insulin shots, the treatment for diabetes was a multi-day oatmeal fast. This has been around for many decades. The only thing that's changed is that you are finally hearing about it.
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.
I did it as well, 2 days of oatmeal (plus some chicken and toppings) and then oatmeal most days just one meal. Didn’t expect much…my cholesterol dropped 25% over a period of 3 months. One data point, will do another 2 days and see in another 3 months.
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'm somewhat gluten sensitive (tends to make my psoriasis flare up) but used to have gluten-free oats for breakfast. Then the porridge seemed to increase my uric acid levels, leading to gout attacks, so I've had to stop eating them (oats are usually classified as mid-level purine content and thus should be only eaten once or twice a week for those prone to gout).
Wait, I don't understand. I thought oatmeal was gluten free, but because of where it's grown and processed, there's a lot of cross contamination with wheat. I buy gluten free oats because of this.
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.
I make it on the stove top. It also takes 30 minutes to cook and 10 to cool. My ratio of water to dry oatmeal is 3 to 1 by weight in grams and I mix in honey after it's done.
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.
Not all oatmeal has the same effect on blood sugar. Steel cut oats are absorbed more slowly than instant oats. Toppings on your oatmeal also affect blood glucose in non-linear ways, the same as any other combination of foods.
I would think the type and preparation would play a significant role. There's steel cut (which can be made soft or "chewy"), firmer "old fashioned", and the quick dissolving mush that is one-minute.
Try oat groats, this will have the lowest GI. You can cook them like rice, even in a rice cooker, using the same technique ... for a firmer result use less water and cook for less time. You can start off with roughly 1:1 ratio of oat groats to water. I do .75 cups oat groats to 1.25 cups water.
Use thicker oats, obviously. Also, add some ceylon cinnamon powder to it. Additionally, if you can tolerate it, also add ground fenugreek powder to it to further offset the absorption.
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.
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.
I've eaten oatmeal for breakfast, have a heart healthy diet, and exercise regularly. My total cholesterol and especially LdL are always massively high.
I have high cholesterol, have had for more than a decade. Was on a statin, they didnt help. Doubled them, they didnt help. Changed my diet radically, lost 25 lbs (I was a little overweight, but not bad), ate full medeteranian diet and did everything I could, my numbers didnt budge. Changed to a stronger one and within two weeks my numbers were perfect.
Used to have a single egg, slice of peperjack cheese draped over it and some fruit. sometimes + meat of some sort. Nothing I thought of as overly unhealthy.
If you make plain oatmeal with less water so that it is thick rather than runny, it can be treated like a side dish like mashed potatoes or polenta in a savory meal. It can be a bit odd at first for people who are used to thinking of oatmeal as a sweetened food but it's something one can get accustomed to quickly and avoids the downside of consuming extra sugar.
We heat up unskimmed milk, add oatmeal, let them soak for at least 10 minutes. Then serve them and pour a little bit of cold milk over the cooked oatmeal. Plain, or add some fresh fruit, nuts, berries to taste.
I usually eat mine like cereal, uncooked old-fashioned in cold milk, with a bit of honey or brown sugar for flavor. Apparently this is normal overseas.
Steel cut is just a different thing altogether. I like mine a bit on the firm side, with butter, brown sugar. On top, some plain yogurt pair nicely. Cranberries and walnuts are pretty great too.
I think one-minute/instant oatmeal is terrible, no matter how it's prepared, which is unfortunately most people's first experience with oatmeal.
I soak mine overnight with nuts, in water and a tsp of yogurt, then drain/rinse off in the morning. Steel-cut if I'm cooking it stove-top, large-flake if I'm just microwaving the oats. Serve with the nuts, alongside berries and whatever else.
Years ago I'd sometimes go over-the-top with homemade kefir, cocoa nibs, lemon zest. I stopped the kefir habit not so much because of the hassle but because I didn't want to consume that much volume of dairy every day. I get enough lactic acid from kimchi, and protein from other sources.
Good: Oat flakes. I like Bob's Red Mill in North America and Karavansay in Colombia. Boil them a short time, drain part or all of the water, and eat them with a little bit of honey or a fruit such as blueberries.
I add 1-2 tbsp of soy milk powder (not to be confused with soy protein powder) which adds bulk. In the end I add wild blueberries to sweeten it. Sometimes I add chia seeds, especially if I can leave it soaked overnight.
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.
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.
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.)
Oatmeal is extra special because of it has high amounts of beta glucan, a soluble fiber.
[dead]
I wonder, do overnight oats wind up processing away a lot of the benefits? Do steel-cut oats have more of an effect on cholesterol than rolled?
Wait, how does fiber cut cholesterol?
The article is a little densely worded.
iirc, from older articles, which differ from this nice result, bile acids contain cholesterol(s) and they're generally reabsorbed in the intestines, so the fiber is conjectured to bind with some before reabsorption, expelling the bound fraction of circulating cholesterol in feces.
this result in the paper is very interesting in the conjecture is that the gut microbiome is altered in a beneficial way, and that the effect (with the resulting lowering of cholesterol) persists for weeks after even 2 days of oats.
1 reply →
I'd bet that oatmeal helps cancer due to increased elimination from the GI system, like any fibre
In related fashion, you might be interested in reading about the impact of soy protein.
Can you please elaborate and/or provide links?
1 reply →
Oh boy. Now we’re entering the fiber era. We’re just leaving the protein era. Before that it was the intermittent fasting era. Before that it was the keto era. The low fat era was probably a few before that.
I hear about fiber constantly all of the sudden. You might be right about it, but how do we know it’s different than. All the past nutrition tends?
Idk about cholesterol, fiber is well known to be very healthy. Same for protein.
Losing body fat will often have the biggest impact by far if one is overweight, though. It also stabilizes blood sugar and has a lot of benefits in general.
I'm in my 50s and I've been hearing about the benefits of fibre pretty much all my life. I doubt it's some sort of diet fad.
It is funny how you can break diet/nutrition into generations like this.
I think the trends are a reflection of poor education. Fiber/protein/whatever being important components of a diet isn't new information. But the information is new to folks that never had nutrition explained to them.
Because the trends are bullshit and nutrition is just not that complicated.
The trends are a strange type of nutrition entertainment for people to read and then ignore in practice. There is some kind of psychological comfort in the knowing you can switch to oatmeal next week while gorging yourself at the Cheesecake Factory.
Oatmeal is good for you. News at a 11. We have known this for at least that last 50 years.
I feel like we're due for something really ridiculous next. I've been paying attention to macros, fibre, salt, and having a reasonably varied diet for years; we've done salt, fat, carbs, protein, and now we're doing fibre.
"Eat a varied diet" seems boring but maybe those influencers selling pills made from 500 vegetables were ahead of the curve all along.
1 reply →
Before manufactured insulin shots, the treatment for diabetes was a multi-day oatmeal fast. This has been around for many decades. The only thing that's changed is that you are finally hearing about it.
I heard about fiber for the last 30 years. But I'm also not American.
Heard about fiber all my life, but also went in school in Europe.
[dead]
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.
I did it as well, 2 days of oatmeal (plus some chicken and toppings) and then oatmeal most days just one meal. Didn’t expect much…my cholesterol dropped 25% over a period of 3 months. One data point, will do another 2 days and see in another 3 months.
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'm somewhat gluten sensitive (tends to make my psoriasis flare up) but used to have gluten-free oats for breakfast. Then the porridge seemed to increase my uric acid levels, leading to gout attacks, so I've had to stop eating them (oats are usually classified as mid-level purine content and thus should be only eaten once or twice a week for those prone to gout).
Wait, I don't understand. I thought oatmeal was gluten free, but because of where it's grown and processed, there's a lot of cross contamination with wheat. I buy gluten free oats because of this.
https://celiac.org/gluten-free-oats-whats-the-deal/
That's why I specified the protein found in oats, which is similar to but different from gluten. This paper adds some detail: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=oat+...
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.
I make it on the stove top. It also takes 30 minutes to cook and 10 to cool. My ratio of water to dry oatmeal is 3 to 1 by weight in grams and I mix in honey after it's done.
Previously (30 days ago, 355 points, 268 comments):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46819809
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.
Not all oatmeal has the same effect on blood sugar. Steel cut oats are absorbed more slowly than instant oats. Toppings on your oatmeal also affect blood glucose in non-linear ways, the same as any other combination of foods.
I would think the type and preparation would play a significant role. There's steel cut (which can be made soft or "chewy"), firmer "old fashioned", and the quick dissolving mush that is one-minute.
psyllium husk. zero calorie fiber
glycemic index of steel cut is low, whereas large-flake is medium-high, and instant oats are high. Though you have to account for load.
My approach is to have a modest amount and increase the nuts and chia mixed with it, alongside berries and yogurt.
Try oat groats, this will have the lowest GI. You can cook them like rice, even in a rice cooker, using the same technique ... for a firmer result use less water and cook for less time. You can start off with roughly 1:1 ratio of oat groats to water. I do .75 cups oat groats to 1.25 cups water.
Use thicker oats, obviously. Also, add some ceylon cinnamon powder to it. Additionally, if you can tolerate it, also add ground fenugreek powder to it to further offset the absorption.
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.
Is it the oatmeal itself or the glyphosate present in all oatmeal?
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.
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've eaten oatmeal for breakfast, have a heart healthy diet, and exercise regularly. My total cholesterol and especially LdL are always massively high.
My body hates me.
I have high cholesterol, have had for more than a decade. Was on a statin, they didnt help. Doubled them, they didnt help. Changed my diet radically, lost 25 lbs (I was a little overweight, but not bad), ate full medeteranian diet and did everything I could, my numbers didnt budge. Changed to a stronger one and within two weeks my numbers were perfect.
I believe for some of us its purely genetic.
4 replies →
My LDL is stuck between 145 and 155 permanently. Same for my mom and aunts. Oatmeal, exercise, etc. doesn't help.
I'm still young so my doctor isn't terribly concerned, but in 10 years I'll probably have to be on statins.
What do you mean by heart healthy diet?
Egg whites, lean meats, etc? Strict whole food plant based?
1 reply →
What do you have for breakfast before that if I may ask?
Used to have a single egg, slice of peperjack cheese draped over it and some fruit. sometimes + meat of some sort. Nothing I thought of as overly unhealthy.
2 replies →
Mmm oatmeal. Breakfast of champions. I usually do it for about 330 days a year. Take a month off every once in a while..
How do you take your oatmeal?
If you make plain oatmeal with less water so that it is thick rather than runny, it can be treated like a side dish like mashed potatoes or polenta in a savory meal. It can be a bit odd at first for people who are used to thinking of oatmeal as a sweetened food but it's something one can get accustomed to quickly and avoids the downside of consuming extra sugar.
2 replies →
Savory: add a fried egg, soy sauce, and cottage cheese
5 replies →
We heat up unskimmed milk, add oatmeal, let them soak for at least 10 minutes. Then serve them and pour a little bit of cold milk over the cooked oatmeal. Plain, or add some fresh fruit, nuts, berries to taste.
I like a splash of maple syrup, oat milk, and maybe half a packet of sweetener if I'm feeling cheeky. Cocoa nibs and dried fruits are excellent too.
I use minute oats. Drop in boiling water, toss in a Half handful of raisins or crasins.
I usually eat mine like cereal, uncooked old-fashioned in cold milk, with a bit of honey or brown sugar for flavor. Apparently this is normal overseas.
Steel cut is just a different thing altogether. I like mine a bit on the firm side, with butter, brown sugar. On top, some plain yogurt pair nicely. Cranberries and walnuts are pretty great too.
I think one-minute/instant oatmeal is terrible, no matter how it's prepared, which is unfortunately most people's first experience with oatmeal.
1 reply →
Peanut butter, chia seed and banana slices.
I soak mine overnight with nuts, in water and a tsp of yogurt, then drain/rinse off in the morning. Steel-cut if I'm cooking it stove-top, large-flake if I'm just microwaving the oats. Serve with the nuts, alongside berries and whatever else.
Years ago I'd sometimes go over-the-top with homemade kefir, cocoa nibs, lemon zest. I stopped the kefir habit not so much because of the hassle but because I didn't want to consume that much volume of dairy every day. I get enough lactic acid from kimchi, and protein from other sources.
1 reply →
Good: Oat flakes. I like Bob's Red Mill in North America and Karavansay in Colombia. Boil them a short time, drain part or all of the water, and eat them with a little bit of honey or a fruit such as blueberries.
Bad: Oatly
I add 1-2 tbsp of soy milk powder (not to be confused with soy protein powder) which adds bulk. In the end I add wild blueberries to sweeten it. Sometimes I add chia seeds, especially if I can leave it soaked overnight.
Buttered
From what LDL-C or AboB level to what?
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.
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.
Yeah it's a quite well known result you often see rapid improvements across several health markers from just a few days of calorie restriction.
Supposedly, eating food with vitamin c before eating oatmeal improves iron absorption from the oatmeal.
> 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.
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.
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.
[dead]