Forget the corned beef …

Better Nutrition, March, 2000 by Patricia Andersen-Parrado

Oatmeal is real Irish fare

When March rolls around each year, many people -- both Irish and non-Irish alike -- participate in St. Patrick's Day festivities. The typical fare served? You guessed it -- corned beef and cabbage. While this dish is certainly served in Ireland sometimes (especially the cabbage), it is not necessarily the national dish of the Emerald Isle.

A more authentic way to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, in terms of your menu selection, may be to start your day with a heaping bowl of oatmeal. In her book, The Complete Book of Irish Cooking, Darina Allen tells us, "From the time that Ireland became a society of farmers rather than hunter-gatherers, oatmeal has been a staple food. Early Irish literature contains many references to various kinds of porridge made, depending on the wealth of the household, with water, milk, or buttermilk."

Delicious, nutritious, and an aid to weight control

In addition to being a delicious way to start off your day, oatmeal is also very nutritious -- high in fiber, low in fat, and sodium-free. And, recent research shows that it may even help you to control your appetite.

Last year, researchers at the New York Obesity Research Center at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center conducted a study, starting with the hypothesis that eating oatmeal for breakfast could help with weight control by curbing appetite at lunch. The results of this study, conducted by Allan Geliebter, Ph.D., and colleagues at St. Luke's and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, were presented at the annual scientific meeting of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity (NAASO).

This study was conducted to determine whether breakfast cereals providing an equal number of calories, but different fiber content, would have an effect of food intake at lunch.

Two groups of 16 healthy, non-dieting people between the ages of 20 and 44 participated -- half were of normal weight and half were overweight. The study was conducted over 3 non-consecutive days. In each group, there were eight men and eight women. The participants had breakfast at 9 a.m., consisting of either: (1) 350 calories worth of oatmeal containing 8 grams of fiber, mixed with water and milk; (2) 350 calories of sugared corn flakes with no fiber; or (3) water as a control, in random order. Hunger and appetite were rated after breakfast, 1 1/2 hours later, and 3 hours later, at lunchtime. At all points measured, the oatmeal eaters had lower hunger ratings. At lunch they ate significantly less -- 30 percent -- than the people who ate the sugared corn flakes, or those who just drank water.

In an interview with Better Nutrition, Geliebter said that the oatmeal eaters' greater satiety was likely due to oatmeal's fiber content. He added, "We have some evidence that the fiber kept the cereal in the stomach for a longer period of time. That could explain why the oatmeal eaters had a fuller feeling three hours later."

Another interesting finding of this study, for reasons that are not quite clear, is that the overweight participants who ate oatmeal for breakfast ate much less for lunch than did the normal weight people who had eaten oatmeal for breakfast. As to a possible reason why this occurred, Geliebter said, "I can speculate that, maybe, overweight people don't eat much fiber, so, the oatmeal may have had a bigger impact on them."

Protection against high-fat meals

In addition to oatmeal, the typical Irish diet contains a fair share of fat -- plenty of dairy products, bacon, etc. So, a 1999 study conducted at the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center, which found that eating a large bowl of oatmeal can prevent the harmful effect on blood vessels (namely, decreased blood flow) that a high-fat meal can cause, is certainly good news. The findings of this study were presented by David Katz, M.D., the study's lead researcher, at the annual meeting of the American College of Nutrition.

In this study, 50 healthy adults were fed a high-fat test meal on three separate occasions, once a week for 3 weeks. The meal contained 50 grams of fat, an amount one might find in a typical fast-food breakfast of, say, a sausage/egg/cheese biscuit with a side of hash browns. On each occasion the high-fat meal was accompanied by a different test substance: (1) bowl of oatmeal containing 3.5 grams of soluble fiber; (2) a supplement of 800 I.U. vitamin E; or (3) a comparable bowl of hot whole-wheat cereal.

Three hours before and after each meal, each participant's blood flow was measured by ultrasound. The investigators found that blood flow decreased significantly -- by 13.4 percent -- following the high-fat meal consumed with the hot whole wheat cereal, but not following the meal accompanied by either oatmeal or vitamin E. Thus, both oatmeal and vitamin E were shown to fend off the dangerous decreased blood flow that occurs after consuming a high-fat meal.

In a press release issued by Yale, Katz said, "Our results confirm not only that a high-fat meal induces endothelial dysfunction [abnormal blood vessel behavior, demonstrated by the decreased blood flow], but also that eating oatmeal can mitigate this harmful response in a manner similar to potent antioxidants like vitamin E."