Eating oats shown to help lower cholesterol levels

A new study has showed that eating oats can lower bodily cholesterol levels, as measured by a variety of markers.

The research from St Michael's Hospital looked at data from 58 existing clinical trials involving almost 4,000 people from around the world and assessed the effect of diets enriched with beta-glucan, a viscous soluble fibre found in oats with numerous health benefits.

It was found that the oat-based diet was able to reduce levels of "bad" LDL cholesterol by 4.2 percent, while non-HDL cholesterol – total cholesterol minus healthy HDL cholesterol – fell by 4.8 percent.

Meanwhile, levels of apolipoprotein B (apoB) – a lipoprotein that carries bad cholesterol through the blood – was cut by 2.3 percent.

Dr Vladimir Vuksan, a research scientist and associate director of the Risk Factor Modification Centre of St Michael's Hospital, said: "Diets enriched with about 3.5 grams a day of beta-glucan fibre from oats were found to modestly improve LDL cholesterol [and] also non-HDC and apoB compared to control diets."

People can increase the amount of oat fibre in their diet by eating oatmeal, oat bran or certain oat-heavy baked products.

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