Oats vs Oat Flour

[pinchharmonic]

I have a hamilton beach blender and decided one day to blend my oats up. To my surprise, it turned into a fine powder, not as fine as your normal wheat flour, but nonetheless a texture I didn't think was possible considering oats have a much higher fiber content.

Anyway, obviously the macros are the same between oats and oat flour, except the oat flour has more density.

My question is, did I effectively increase the glycemic index oats? All that grinding of the oats would have otherwise been left for my stomach to do, potentially taking it a lot more time..and thus lowering the GI?

If you're wondering, I use the flour to make muffins, adding baking soda, sucralose, an egg, and unsweetened almond milk, which is negligible as far as macros and calories. I also weigh the oat flour to use as much as I would use with regular oats, since the density has changed.

I do hope that it's just as glycemically friendly as my original oats

[pmiller383]

The more you process any food the faster it is going to digest, but it the grand scheme of things I don't think grinding your oats occasionally for a baking endeavor is going drastically change the glycemic response to the food, but it will elevate somewhat. If you do end up baking with the ground oats you could always go for a mixture of 50% oat flour and 50% fine oat bran which would bump up the fiber and protein content and bring the glycemic response down some points.

[pinchharmonic]

The more you process any food the faster it is going to digest, but it the grand scheme of things I don't think grinding your oats occasionally for a baking endeavor is going drastically change the glycemic response to the food, but it will elevate somewhat. If you do end up baking with the ground oats you could always go for a mixture of 50% oat flour and 50% fine oat bran which would bump up the fiber and protein content and bring the glycemic response down some points.

hey thanks pmiller, that's a great idea.

I do have some oat bran so i was thinking I can add that in along with regular rolled oats and also ground flax seed. all to give it that denser texture and the extra fiber and protein.

I plan on using this recipe as a staple in my nutritional plan because I've read that a non-liquid form of carbohydrate can be very beneficial to your health since the chewing action is involved. This is the only way I figured out to use oats, one of my favorite carb sources, in a non-liquid way.

I read somewhere that your standard oatmeal in water, standalone, tends to bypass your stomach and get digested later down the line. If you have a dry(solid) carbohydrate, the chewing starts the digestion in your mouth and more of the carbohydrates get digested in the stomach.. I do have some mild IBS syptoms so I figured it may help.

thanks again, repped

[Steveoph]

It was raised to my attention originally by bobo that grinding oats doesn't affect their GI. Here's the relvant post. Search skills at hand, Does blending oats in shake make it more glycemic?

[Irish Cannon]

I grind my oats in a coffee grinder ever day before I put them in my pre-workout shake.