Oatmeal

As a first post, lets discuss one of my favorite breakfast foods. Oh, you already know everything about oatmeal? How it just comes in a cardboard roll with the Quaker Oats guy on the cover? You know NOTHING of this fine food.

Oats, most often seen here in America as rolled oats as pictured, are a cereal grain, favoring cooler, wetter climates, like those of Northeastern Europe. Russia, as a result, grows the most oats worldwide, more than twice that of the US and around 1/5th of the world supply.

Oatmeal (also known as porridge) has been touted for its health benefits, with studies showing the soluble fiber in oat bran having effects on lowering LDL levels and decreasing your risk for heart disease. Also, the low caloric content and high fiber results in you consuming fewer calories and staying fuller, longer after consuming a bowlful. Oats also have a protein content very similar to the much celebrated soybean.

When you go to buy your oatmeal, you have a number of choices nowadays, including steel-cut (Irish) oats, Scottish oats, old-fashioned rolled oats, and instant oats. Steel-cut oats are merely whole oats that have been, you guessed it, cut into two or three pieces per groat with steel blades. This form of oat, while retaining much more texture and a nuttier flavor than other processings (and my favorite as a result) take a verrry long time to cook, upwards of half an hour at the least, but very much worth it! Scottish oats, closer to Irish or steel-cut oats, are whole oats that have been ground between stones to a finer grind than Irish oats, taking less time that their close cousin, but still more than rolled-oats.

Rolled-oats (the classic, Quaker oats type you're likely to think of with the word "oatmeal") are whole oats than have basically been flattened by heavy rollers, then lightly steamed and roasted, making a much quicker cooking product (more surface area and par-cooking from the steam). Instant and quick-cooking oatmeal is then derived from rolled-oats, by chopping them up even finer, creating more surface area, a quicker cooking time, and even less texture (blech).

While all these various types of oatmeal have the same nutritional facts (as they're all still just made of oats) they don't have identical health benefits. On the scale of processing, instant oatmeal, with its near powdered oats, have the highest glycemic index rating, meaning they breakdown fasted in your body and release a flood of carbohydrates into your bloodstream. This means quick energy, but not long lasting, resulting in blood sugar and insulin spikes, and hunger returning faster. Irish oats, being the least processed of the bunch, have the lowest GI rating, resulting in the most stable blood sugar levels (great for diabetics) and longest period of fullness.

Armed with your new knowledge about this breakfast of champions, go out and make yourself a bowl.


In other news, your words of the day:
"Flambeau" : a flaming torch
"Sapid" : having flavor