Is oatmeal healthy?

Oatmeal is healthy and is listed in the Wheel of Five. Oatmeal is a whole grain cereal. Whole grain products reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. Ultimately, how you prepare it and what you add to it determines how healthy it is. So it is healthy if you make it with semi-skimmed milk.

What is oatmeal?

Oatmeal is made from cut and crushed oat grains. Oats are a whole grain cereal. There are also oat flakes, which are the uncut crushed oat grains. Sometimes oatmeal or oat flakes are roasted for the taste. They are often pre-steamed to shorten cooking time. Because oatmeal is made from whole oat grains, it falls under the category of whole grains.

Oatmeal is often eaten for breakfast, but you can also eat it as a snack or add it to dishes and baked goods. It is often eaten with milk like porridge. Or it gets in the yogurt sprinkled. It can also be in a carton of muesli or other breakfast foods. You can also find it in biscuits and in prepackaged bars.

The composition and preparation determines how healthy it is. If you are making oatmeal with semi-skimmed or low-fat milk or yogurt and you don't add sugar or salt, you have a great Disk of Five breakfast. Optionally, you can add fruit or some nuts. You can replace milk with soy drink, provided it has added calcium and vitamin B12. An oatmeal bar or cookie for breakfast or lunch is less healthy: often quite a few sugars have been added and / or the portion very large.

Oatmeal delivers just like bread carbohydrates, proteins, fiber, B vitamins and minerals. Therefore, you can use oat products Use fine if you want something different than bread. But you better not bread completely replaced with oatmeal. Iodine is added to bread and to oatmeal not. Iodine takes care of keep the thyroid gland working properly. You always eat oatmeal instead bread, you may be getting too little iodine.

Generally reduce whole wheat products reduce the risk of heart disease. Oats are specific shown to help lower LDL cholesterol in the blood. Low LDL cholesterol takes care of it that you have less risk of cardiovascular disease.

Oats do not naturally contain gluten, but often come into contact with gluten-containing grains such as wheat. This allows oats contain traces of gluten. Oat products are therefore not suitable for people with gluten intolerance (celiac disease), unless the official Gluten Free logo is on the packaging.

Our recipe site contains tasty recipes with oatmeal. How about this one? Porridge with apple and cinnamon Oatmeal pancakes Yogurt with dried fruit, nuts and toasted oatmeal

You cannot really say whether one product is healthy. It always depends on how much or how often you eat it. We can therefore say whether a product fits in a healthy diet. Read more