[briandon]

Oatmeal (if unsweetened/unflavored) has about the same GI as orange juice or cake made from some Betty Crocker boxed cake mixes and is just slightly lower-GI than the American formulation of Coca-Cola (see #333 Oatmeal (Canada), GI value of 54 ± 4 in the table at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000291652...).

I think oatmeal and other high-GI foods are promoted as low-GI in hopes of helping wean diabetics and pre-diabetics off of even worse foods (e.g. something really bad like powdered donuts), akin to how methadone is used to try to help heroin addicts. But genuine low-GI foods would be things like eggs, cheese, or chicken breast (all with nearly 0 GI) or some raw veggies like raw broccoli or the greens in a leafy salad (in the neighborhood, roughly, of 10-20 GI). Cooking low-GI vegetables like broccoli defeats the purpose and raises its GI to around the same value as oatmeal.

[switch007]

I wrote oats, not oatmeal (I don't think we really use that term in the UK). AIUI "Oatmeal" can refer to various things, including high GI porridge.

I only buy steel-cut oats, which various sources on google say are around 42 GI [0][1]. I do concede that any form of oats are on the upper-end of low and/or medium, and aren't some magic super food and one should not focus just on GI.

Steel cut oats are definitely better than most breakfast cereals however.

Joel Fuhrman in his book on reversing diabates also recommends small portions of oats (but mostly says to eat veggies).

[0] https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/steel_cut_oats_are_a_nutrient_...

[1] https://www.nutritionletter.tufts.edu/ask-experts/q-before-c...