One of the most common breakfast foods is oatmeal. Many consider it being a healthy breakfast, but the Paleo Diet says that no grains are allowed. Since oats are grains, they are not technically Paleo… but are oats really bad for you?
There are things I love about the Paleo diet, and there are things where I have my own twist on the Paleo Diet…
Oats can be used as a tool to get more energy and lose weight… but there is a very important distinction between the type of oats we use and the type of oats most people use…
To say that “oats are bad” is too broad of a statement because it doesn’t distinguish the type of oats we are talking about…
There is a difference between rolled oats, steel cut oatmeal and most importantly, the breed of the oatmeal seed. If you are looking for oats to include in your diet, then by far the most important thing you should look for is the breed of the oat seed…
Not many health gurus talk about this information, but it’s what has had the biggest impact for our Paleo Success Stories…
There are two types of oat breeds you need to know about… there are heirloom breeds and there are patented breeds…
Heirloom breeds are breeds that are grown naturally with no help from mankind… they grow wild and therefore you cannot patent them…
Patented breeds are by default not natural because they need to have “proprietary” qualities in order to patent them…
Most commercially available oats are from patented oat seeds… one of the most common breeds is “Reins” Spring Oat (Avena Sativa L) Reg. No. CV-381, PI 678937…
If you buy oats from commercial brands like Quaker Oats, note that you won’t be able to trace back the type of seed they use since they’ll hide that information by saying they source from farmers that meet their “quality standards”…
Heirloom grains on the other hand come from natural, untreated, non hybrid, open pollinated, non GMO seeds…
In other words, the genetics of the seed have remained stable for thousands of years… the same can’t be said about patented seeds, because that’s exactly what allows them to patent their seed, it’s their genetic component…
What makes these grains stand out more than anything is their nutrient content… growing heirloom oat varieties like Peelcorn oats is much harder than growing modern day oats… the old fashioned way of growing oats is what almost forces the oats to be higher in minerals because that’s what gives them strength and helps it thrive…
Why are minerals so important in food?
If you want more energy, then minerals is how you get more energy…
Think about it this way… if you have a AA battery cell, you have something that stores energy, but in order to use that energy you need a conductive mineral like copper to use the energy stored inside the battery cell…
Similarly, your body has cells which are like battery cells that store energy for you… in order for you to use the energy that your body stores, you need conductive minerals…
Farming practices that ensure food is being grown mineral rich, is what you are looking for when deciding where to get oats from….
Why are oats bad for you?
If we are talking about patented seed oat grains, then no matter what, those are simply not good for you…
If we are talking about heirloom oats, then they can be good, but you do have to learn a few things about grains…
Most people say that grains are not good for you because of anti-nutrients… but saying that only shows their ignorance about how our ancestors prepared grains…
The Paleo Diet is all about eating like our ancestors… our ancestors prepared grains a certain way and they never had any issues…
The anti-nutrients you will hear about are lectins, phytic acid, and in some cases gluten… oats don’t have gluten… I talk more about gluten in the Einkorn blog post (heirloom wheat)…
Lectins and phytic acid are the plant’s natural protective mechanism… they work by essentially inhibiting digestion… in the case of lectins, it is a hard to digest protein… phytic acid on the other hand binds to minerals which are also needed for digestion…
To say that grains are bad because they have anti-nutrients means that the person never learned that grains are to be soaked, sprouted and in some cases fermented because that’s how you remove phytic acid and break down hard to digest proteins like lectins…
Beer brewers have known this for thousands of years… they soak grains at room temperature which they call a phytic acid rest, which is what allows them to access the nutrients in the grain… they then use water with minerals to digest the starch into sugar for beer brewing purposes…
Your body works the same way… if you eat oats without soaking them, then you’ll be consuming hard to digest proteins (which is what people with celiacs tend to react to)… gluten and lectins are both hard to digest proteins… gluten and lectins in heirloom grain varieties are much easier to digest than modern day varieties, which is why choosing heirloom grain varieties is the most important thing when it comes to eating grains like oats…
When you soak grains (overnight) you remove phytic acid so that your gut can actually digest the nutrients… if you can’t digest the food you eat, then it starts to build up in your gut and it creates a toxic environment… the toxins that build up in that environment are what end up in your fat cells that makes people gain weight…
This is why cutting out grains works for many people… not because grains are bad for you, but because most people are consuming grains that not heirloom and on top of that, they don’t know how to prepare them properly… so cutting them out works in that instance…
… but if you want to eat grains like oats and you want to do it in a way that fits a Paleo lifestyle, then you have to eat like our ancestors… they only had access to heirloom grains and they knew how to prepare them properly to remove the anti-nutrients…
This is how you can get more energy and lose weight with paleo friendly oats…
