Dr. Sarah Berry

There's some fantastic data that's come from what we call the epidemiological studies, which are studies in large populations where they've followed people for a long period of time and looked at depending on whether people are oat eaters or not oat eaters, whether that affects their risk of disease.

And in one such study where they followed more than 500,000 individuals over many years, they found that people who

were oat eaters versus those who didn't eat any oats actually had lower rates of type 2 diabetes by about 15% and lower all-cause mortality, which basically means risk of dying.

And that was by about 20%.

Now, obviously, there's lots of other things that might explain some of this.

People who eat oats tend to smoke less, et cetera, but you can actually adjust for that in the analysis.

You can never fully disentangle it.

So it's not kind of the strongest evidence to pull on.

But that gives us an idea that there's something going on there, that there's something about eating oats that might be beneficial for our health.

And so the next thing we need to look at is clinical trials.

And also, is there a mechanism?

Is there some kind of rationale why we might be seeing this?

And what we know is that oats contain a very special fiber called beta-glucan.

And this fiber is well known to reduce circulating cholesterol levels.

So to reduce total cholesterol, but also reduce LDL, which is our bad cholesterol that we know is linked to heart disease.

And there's been lots of clinical trials that have been published showing that if you add oats to a meal or the beta-glucan to a meal, that you can significantly reduce people's cholesterol levels.

It needs to be about a certain dose.

So we know that you need to be having about three grams of the beta-glucan a day in order to lower your cholesterol.

And so the FDA in the US and the EFSA, the European Food Standards Agency in the UK,

actually have an approved health claim that beta-glucan, this fiber that's in oats, at three grams a day can reduce your cholesterol and hence is associated with improved heart health.