Fiber in Cereal Question

BabyBoomer · Tue Feb 15, 2005 11:16 pm

If fiber is suppose to be >8 grams/serving - why is oatmeal OK at only 4 grams. Just wondering. I love old fashion oatmeal, but if cold cereal is better with a higher fiber content, then I would consider switching. Thanks!

RedRox · Tue Feb 15, 2005 11:23 pm

One of the great mysteries of SB!! I think it has to do with the proven heart healthiness of the oatmeal. Oats are pretty much all soluble fiber and wheats are insoluble. Soluble fiber is good for reducing cholesterol whereas insoluble is good for regularity. You need both kinds. So it may not have the same amount of fiber, but it is still good for your heart health. So why can't you have other cereals that only have 4 gms of fiber. I don't know!! If you enjoy the old fashioned oatmeal, continue to enjoy it as an allowed cereal in P2. Personally we tend to switch back and forth between a higher fiber cold cereal and the oatmeal on alternating mornings during the week, or depending on how our early AM time managment is working on any particular day!

Kimboroni · Tue Feb 15, 2005 11:35 pm

Yeah, oats are notoriously healthy, and the way that oatmeal is made, the GI is low.

But another oat cereal, Cheerios, actually doesn't contain nearly the whole oats that it could (they add a lot of starches to it), plus the GI is higher, so it just doesn't match up the way that a good oatmeal does.

BabyBoomer · Wed Feb 16, 2005 12:08 am

Thanks Redroxco and Kimboroni. You are both a wealth of information! I feel humbly honored that you both responded so quickly. I am thinking of alternating my oatmeal with Uncle Sam (very high fiber) every other day.
Thanks again!

BabyBoomer

RedRox · Wed Feb 16, 2005 12:38 am

Sounds like a plan! We like our US too! And skip the humbly honored stuff!! You're embarrassing us!! ;) If I had a life, you'd still be waiting! ;)

Carrye · Wed Feb 16, 2005 2:59 am

I bought some steel cut oats today. My friend told me that I should mix them with some quick oats for texture and add some dried fruit to the soy milk for flavor. What is SB friendly?

audreyh1 · Wed Feb 16, 2005 4:20 am

Yes, I never really understood the recommendations for 8g of fiber per serving for cereal because most cold cereals achieve this specification by adding a bunch of insoluble fiber to the cereal. This seems kind of fake.

Personally I don't think having a high insoluble fiber component really provides any benefits. You definitely need enough for normal bowel function, but when they did tests on the benefits of a high insoluble fiber diet, they really found no benefits. In fact a diet too high in insoluble fiber tends to rob the digestive tract of nutrients, not a good thing.

The really high fiber requirement for cereal seems to be more for the cold cereal. I think perhaps because cold cereals are really highly processed (puffed, flaked, etc.), without a high fiber component they would be too high in digestible carbs. And for most of these cereals, the soluble fiber component tends to be pretty low.

Because oatmeal contains 2g of soluble fiber per serving it's GI is lower than cold cereals. 4g of fiber per serving of oatmeal is fine because half of that fiber is soluble fiber, and soluble fiber really helps slow digestion. Now nowhere have I seen these rules explained, I am just speculating.

So I tend to avoid foods that have a bunch of insoluble fiber added just to boost the fiber content. I figure if I eat a food high in soluble fiber, I'll get plenty of insoluble too.

I've pretty much rejected cold cereals since SB. Well - I eat my oats cold and uncooked in the form of muesli, but that's a super minimally processed form of oats.

Well - this is one of my worst rambling posts. I hope someone can decipher what the h** I mean.

Audrey

RedRox · Wed Feb 16, 2005 6:05 am

Carrye wrote: I bought some steel cut oats today. My friend told me that I should mix them with some quick oats for texture and add some dried fruit to the soy milk for flavor. What is SB friendly?

Steel cut oats are SB friendly. And so are the old fashioned kind of rolled oats (like Quaker). Quick oats are not. Some dried fruits are OK, like apricots and apples. I'm not sure all are. (I don't think raisins are all that good for instance.) We just usually use fresh or frozen fruits anyway. And in SB you can use real milk (1% or skim), you don't have to use soy milk, unless there are other reasons you are using soy milk, like lactose intolerance. Does that help?

RedRox · Wed Feb 16, 2005 6:35 am

audreyh1 wrote: Well - this is one of my worst rambling posts. I hope someone can decipher what the h** I mean.

Audrey

Well what I got out of it is that soluble fiber is better for you than insoluble and too much insoluble fiber can actually be bad for you and we'd probably be better off just eating oatmeal all the time because we get more soluble fiber than we do with cold cereals, even though the total fiber is lower. So that's why oatmeal is an approved cereal even though it doesn't meet the > 8 gms of fiber per serving. The kind of fiber (soluble vs insoluble) also matters.

And glad to know I'm not the only one who can't figure out what they just typed on occasion!

audreyh1 · Wed Feb 16, 2005 1:37 pm

Hi redroxco - yes that was a pretty decent summary! I'm glad you could decipher it!

Another thing - I notice that a lot of folks rely on grains and in particular the morning cereal to get their fiber in. This is understandable, because I hear nutritionists emphasize how grains are important for fiber and certainly some cereal makers emphasize getting your fiber from their products.

However, when I studied the topic a while ago I concluded that beans, vegetables and fruits really provided a tremendous amount of fiber, with plenty of it in soluble form, and that focusing on those foods to provide the daily fiber made more sense. In general, those foods were better sources of fiber than grains.

Grains have their place of course, but relying on grains to provide most of the daily fiber really doesn't make nutrition sense IMO - especially if it causes you to eat more grains and less of these other vitamin packed foods.

Audrey

Carrye · Wed Feb 16, 2005 4:19 pm

redroxco wrote: Steel cut oats are SB friendly. And so are the old fashioned kind of rolled oats (like Quaker). Quick oats are not. Some dried fruits are OK, like apricots and apples. I'm not sure all are. (I don't think raisins are all that good for instance.) We just usually use fresh or frozen fruits anyway. And in SB you can use real milk (1% or skim), you don't have to use soy milk, unless there are other reasons you are using soy milk, like lactose intolerance. Does that help?

I knew about the raisins - that's what the store had, but I thought I'd look a little further. I bought the soy milk for my Kashi cereal actually, but living by myself, I don't go through enough milk to buy different kinds. You mentioned using fresh and frozen fruits - do you just throw them in after the oatmeal is finished cooking?

I've never been a huge oatmeal fan, but I'm finding that I like different foods since starting SB, so I thought I'd give it a try.

RedRox · Wed Feb 16, 2005 6:48 pm

Carrye, mostly we use strawberries or bananas. Frozen strawberries recommend nuking them first for a bit so you can cut them up more easily, but not so much they are total mush. Since they are still partially frozen at that point, they go in with more time left to cook. There is no way in my experience to get a frozen strawberry, thawed and have the texture of fresh. They are always mushy. But once in the oatmeal, that is not as much of a problem as you still get the flavor and sweetness. Fresh strawberries go in later than that as do bananas. But I tend to cook the oatmeal most of the way and then add and then cook a bit more. Sorry I'm not being more precise as I cook two portions at once and how cooked you like things is more a personal preference. I guess I add them without about 20% of the remaining time left and go longer if necessary. Also read the ingredients on frozen fruits as we had trouble finding them without added sugars.

Carrye · Wed Feb 16, 2005 8:33 pm

That's actually very helpful redroxco! It's nice to know that I can use fresh &/or frozen fruit too. Do you usually mix steel cut and rolled oats, or is that just a personal taste as well?

RedRox · Wed Feb 16, 2005 8:46 pm

I've tried the steel cut and didn't care for them that much. So I'm a rolled oats kind of guy at this point. Those that like their steel cut oats swear by them and wouldn't eat anything else. McCann's seem to be the brand of choice and maybe that was my problem. I went "affordable" with Bob's Red Mill made domestically. They also don't microwave quite as well and take longer to cook and I'm not disciplined enough for the overnight cooking methods or patient enough to cook them through in the micro in the morning. I think mixing would be difficult because they cook at different rates. If you are not familiar with either, rolled oats are flaky and steel cut oats are little balls, kinda like couscous, only harder. Therefore when cooked their textures are completely different as well. So yes, it seems to be a personal preference thing!!


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