Oat bran

Nutrition Action Healthletter, July-August, 1989 by Bonnie Liebman

Oat Bran: Part II

The way things are going, it would have taken less effort to write an article about the few remaining foods that don't contain oat bran.

"I've never seen a phenomenon like oat bran in my 24 years [of covering new products]," Martin Friedman, editor of New Product News, told The Washington Post last May. "Soon we'll see oat-bran matzos [and] dog biscuits..."

But if you can't stomach the thought of eating still another Oat Bran Something, take heart. Manufacturers are already tripping over themselves to find oat bran's successor.

Among the hottest candidates are rice bran, corn bran, and psyllium--the plant used in laxatives like Metamucil.

What's behind the scramble? For the growing number of people concerned about their cholesterol, eating oat bran and its cousins seems like a simple solution to a messy problem.

And the food industry is only too happy to help. Companies are particularly eager to cash in on the craze because they're not bound by law or regulation to: * test to see if their product actually lowers cholesterol, * add more than a smidgen of oat bran (or whatever), * divulge how much oat bran they've added, or * provide even ordinary nutrition labeling.

To sort through the confusion, we offer a guide to the new cholesterol-lowering products. (Older ones were described in December, 1988. For a copy, send us $1 and a self-addressed, stamped envelope marked "Oat Bran, Part I.") Oat Bran. Oat bran does seem to lower cholesterol. The question is, by how much? The answer is still unclear, but here's what we know so far: * In Quaker Oats' studies of healthy people with average cholesterol levels, about 35 grams of hot oat bran cereal or oatmeal (slightly more than a 2/3-cup cooked serving) lowered cholesterol levels an average of three percent when eaten every day for four to six weeks. * In smaller studies of people who started out with higher cholesterol levels, the equivalent of 3 1/2 servings of hot oat bran cereal a day lowered average cholesterol by as much as 20 percent.

Here's what we don't know: * A serving of oatmeal has nine grams of oat bran, while a serving of oat bran cereal has 28 grams. Yet each was equally effective in lowering cholesterol. * Researchers think it's the soluble fiber in foods that lowers cholesterol. But oat bran has more (2 grams per 2/3 cup, cooked) than oatmeal (1.4 grams). Yet both appear to lower cholesterol equally.

It's possible that the studies conducted so far are not precise enough to detect the difference between 1.4 and 2 grams of soluble fiber. Or it might be something in the oats other than the bran or soluble fiber that lowers cholesterol.

Despite these uncertainties, consumers need some yardstick by which to judge oat-bran foods. Since few manufacturers have analyzed their products for soluble fiber, we use oat bran content in our chart.

Except for oatmeal, we assume that if one serving of any food has 35 grams of oat bran, it will lower the average person's cholesterol by three percent. The last column of the chart provides that information for 45 new foods. Cereals. Cereals still offer the most oat bran for the least fat and fewest calories. Just be careful to pick one with oats in the box, not just the name.

Post Honey Bunches of Oats, for example, has only one gram of oat bran per serving. The company says the cereal isn't intended to be a good source of oat bran, but the name implies otherwise.

On the bright side, two new cold cereals--Nabisco's 100% Bran with Oat Bran and Quaker's Ready-to-Eat Oat Bran--have 20 grams of oat bran per serving. That's still about one-third less than a bowl of the hot stuff, but it's more than you get in most other cold oat bran cereals, such as Kellogg's Common Sense Oat Bran (15 grams) or Ralston's Oat Bran Options (10 grams). Breads, Muffins, Doughnuts. Why eat cereal when you can get your oat bran in a moist, sweet muffin or doughnut? Fat and sugar, that's why.

Sugar is the first ingredient in Dunkin' Donuts' huge blueberry oat bran muffin. The modest 10 grams of oat bran come with a 270-calorie price tag, not to mention 1 1/2 teaspoons of fat.

A Sara Lee muffin has fewer calories (220), but only because it's smaller. A higher percentage of its calories come from nearly two teaspoons of fat.

Oat bran is just a bad excuse to eat Hostess and Duncan Hines muffins, Dunkin' Donuts and Safeway doughnuts, Lender's oat bran bagels, or Oatmeal Goodness English muffins. They have too little oat bran and (except for the bagels and English muffins) too much fat.

Hostess' label says "Oat Bran in 2 Muffins = 1 Bowl of Oatmeal." Perhaps, but two muffins pack 340 calories and four teaspoons of fat. The oatmeal has about 100 calories and less than half a teaspoon of fat.

The Best Bites in this category are Arrowhead Mills muffin mixes and Joseph's Calorie Conscious Oat Bran Pita. Snacks. Chips are fatty, with or without oat bran (and Robert's American Gourmet's are closer to without than with). The same goes for Season's Oat Bran (Cheetos-like) "puffs." Each product has two teaspoons of fat per serving.