Why would the folks at Pepsi try to convince you to eat oats?

If you don’t know it yet, you would figure it out pretty easily.

PepsiCo owns Quaker Oats.

So that explains why a PepsiCo “nutrition specialist” (a thankless job if I ever heard of one) presented two studies about oats at a recent Cereal conference.

As one headline put it: “Oats: New Superfood?”

New? Ummm…no. We’ve known about oats for a long time.

But I will bet the house the researchers studied unprocessed oats.

In other words, they were a far cry from the oatmeal products on most cereal shelves. So don’t crack open a packet of apple cinnamon instant oatmeal and expect to get the torrent of goodness promised in these studies.

For that, you’ll have to go old school. I mean unprocessed steel cut oats that can’t be whipped up in the time it takes to boil a half cup of water.

But the extra effort is worth it. That’s because steel cut oats are low on the glycemic index. And that just means they won’t give you blood sugar spikes.

Instant oatmeal? Compared to the real thing, it’s closer to Froot Loops.

Sources:
“Oats: New Superfood?” Nick Tate, Newsmax Health, 10/2/13, newsmaxhealth.com