Oats

I am on a voyage of intrigue with my 'nutrition analysis' assignment. I have discovered several astounding facts about Rolled Oats, which the Worlds Healthiest Foods site tells me are right up there with spinach and sweet potato for sheer healthy goodness. Rolled Oats, that's proper oats, not the finely milled, 'instantised' version, have a lot going for them. For a grain they are quite high in protein - 16% in fact, and also pack heaps of dietary fibre, and quite a bit of calcium and folate. You can check out the whole profile on this site. Just click on 'new search' and type in 'oats'. That site allows you the search the USDA database of nutrient values. You could get quite excited about it if you had even a little bit of OCD-ness around food and numbers.. not that I know anyone like that.. or anything.... ;)

The other interesting and almost funny thing I found out is that for the past few years I've been completely underestimating the weight of the Oat bran that I have eaten. This means that on every day that I've eaten half a cup of Oatbran - and - that - would - be - nearly - every - day - I have eaten about 160 more calories than I thought I did. If you look at the USDA site you will see that a half cup of Oatbran is taken to be 47g. As part of my assignment I actually had to get a gram weight and found that my half cup (and that's a metric measuring cup) of Oatbran actually weighed 88g. If I was American I'd probably want to sue someone for the extra 48,000 calories that I accidentally consumed during the last year. Does anyone know the lawyer that won the 'McDonalds made me fat' case?

Disclaimer: No offense is implied or intended to Americans. I know and love quite a few of them, including Sara H-T, even though actually she's Canadian, which is apparently a whole other thing (I learned that little fact from South Park).