Oatmeal Day

What the day is

Oatmeal Day is observed on October 29. In American usage oatmeal covers both the processed grain and the cooked breakfast, which is a slightly different scope from the British word porridge.

Origin and background

The origin of the observance is not documented.

The useful thing to understand is processing, because every textural difference follows from it. All oats begin as groats, the whole kernel with the inedible hull removed. Steel-cut oats are groats chopped into two or three pieces, which keeps them dense and chewy and takes twenty to thirty minutes to cook. Rolled oats are groats steamed and pressed flat, which gelatinizes some starch and cuts cooking to five minutes. Quick oats are rolled thinner and cut smaller; instant oats are pressed thinnest and precooked, which is why they turn to paste in a minute.

Nothing is added or removed in that sequence. The nutritional content is nearly identical across all of them; what changes is surface area and therefore how fast the starch hydrates, which affects both texture and how quickly the body digests it.

Oats reached American breakfast tables through nineteenth-century milling companies, which had to persuade a public that regarded oats as horse feed. The marketing campaign that followed, built around cylindrical cardboard containers and heavy advertising, is one of the more successful in food history.

The health interest centers on beta-glucan, a soluble fiber with reasonable evidence behind claims about cholesterol, and one of the few food health claims permitted by regulators in several countries.

How to take part

• Salt it, whatever else you add. Unsalted oatmeal tastes of nothing.
• Try steel-cut at least once, soaked overnight to cut the cooking time.
• Toast the oats in a dry pan or a little butter before adding liquid; it makes a noticeable difference.
• Cook with more liquid than the packet says and stop before it looks done, since it keeps thickening off the heat.
• Use oats in something other than breakfast: flapjacks, crumble topping, or as a binder in meatballs.