Canadian professor Susan Tosh, who has been researching oats in Canada for the past 20 years, has been extolling the virtue of the cereal during her first visit to the South.
After 10 years teaching at the University of Ottawa, she retired as the director of the School of Nutrition Sciences in July last year.
She travelled to New Zealand for the first time to give a public lecture at the University of Otago.
Only 2.6% of the cereals consumed in New Zealand were oats and she believed that was due to a knowledge gap about the health advantages of eating oats.
If 10% of the wheat products in food could be replaced with oats, it would have great health benefits.
"We need the food industry to be sneaking it into things to make it more available," she said.
Oat consumption was 0.4% of the total food supply in New Zealand despite its many health advantages including lowering cholesterol, blood sugar and blood pressure, which lowers the risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
The dietary fibre beta-glucan in oats slows how quickly starches and sugars, such as maple sugar on a bowl of porridge, are absorbed in a bloodstream.
If food contained higher levels of beta-glucan, a diner felt fuller for longer, Prof Tosh said.
People could gain gut health benefits from eating oats.
"It produces short-chain fatty acids to keep the inside skin layer of the colon healthy so you don’t get toxins moving into your bloodstream, which can prevent colon cancer," she said.
Other benefits include it being high in fibre, low in sugar and containing about 14% protein, which was more than 90% digestible.
"It is way better than wheat in that way and it has the highest levels of certain vitamins and minerals compared to other cereals."
Oats had the most calcium, iron, phosphorus, potassium, riboflavin and thiamin content of any cereal.
The starch in oats breaks down slowly so it provides energy for longer than other cereals.
Prof Tosh was born and raised on a berry, corn and beef farm in the agricultural city of Guelph, east of Toronto.
The six years between obtaining her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in food science at the University of Guelph were spent working in food safety for bakery giant Canada Bread.
"When consumers complained I wrote them a letter and gave them a coupon for a loaf of bread," she said.
The weirdest complaint was from a customer who found a pencil baked in their loaf of bread.
After completing her master’s, she spent three years researching in North Carolina before returning to Guelph to complete a PhD.
She then worked as a research scientist for 12 years for government department Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada from 2002.
"That’s where I started working on oats and figuring out the health benefits it provides"
