A study in America
has shown that seven servings of wholegrain breakfast cereals a week led to a
29% reduction in the risk of heart failure for men. This study looked at the
diet of 21,376 men over 20 years. They found that wholegrain cereals and not
cereals that where refined, i.e. had been processed to remove part of the grain
and with it, beneficial nutrients that beneficial to health.
Wholegrain breakfast cereals contain important
nutrients, such as vitamins, minerals, fiber, and oil that have been reported
to lower cardiovascular risk factors and positively influence glucose and
insulin metabolism, the researchers said.
One of the best wholegrain cereals, I
believe, is oats. Oats is the perfect food for infants, children and the
elderly. Oats has been used as a medicine by herbalists for generations, its
use as a major dietary ingredient is highly beneficial in conditions of gastric
hyperacidity (with or without ulcers), gallbladder disorders including jaundice,
chronic rheumatic, circulatory and skin disorders, and diabetes.
Although oats was a classical Mediterranean
food, oats didn’t flourish as a food until it spread to the more northern parts
of Europe with Roman expansion. Some consider oats indigenous to these lands.
Whatever the truth, it is in northern Europe that oats served for centuries to
build robust constitutions that weathered the extreme climate of these lands,
including cold, damp, famine, strife and plague. In the Middle Ages, oatmeal
porridge (from the meal, not the flakes) was the bulk of the peasant diet.
It is difficult to imagine a more nutritive
and restorative grain. The comprehensive effect of oats is rooted in its sweet
taste, which promotes solidity, growth and vitality. Oats therefore enhances
flesh building, weight gain, growth - especially in children, due to its high
protein count - and strength.
Oats has the ability to ‘ground’ a person,
and is very useful in people that feel low or depressed due to stress of
anxiety, overwork or both. It is also used to help people come off drugs; it’s
often included in anti-addiction Herbal formulae.
A good way to see oats is as a restorative
remedy. It will re-build the mind and body after it has become run down due to
overwork or stress, it benefits the endocrine system, especially the thyroid,
pancreas and gonads (sex glands, testes and ovaries) and is useful in all
conditions where weakness of those glands occurs.
One of my favorite ways to eat oats is
cooking oat groats (the whole grain) overnight in a wide mouthed thermos flask.
Just add boiling water to the oat groats and a pinch of salt and leave
overnight in the thermos flask, its still warm in the morning. Beautiful with a
spoon of honey. The perfect start to the day!
