What is oats, and how does it differ from oatmeal and wheat?

More and more people are paying attention to health, especially women who love beauty. In order to lose weight, they rarely eat staple foods, and often brew a cup of oatmeal or hot milk and such, as breakfast or dinner. This way of brewing is simple and nutritious, and is welcomed by many people. So, what are oats?

1. What are oats?

1. Oats are an annual herbaceous plant of the grass family, belonging to premium coarse grains, and are called que mai and wild wheat in the “Compendium of Materia Medica”; it is mainly divided into two types, one is hulled oats, and the other is naked oats. Naked oats are also called oil wheat and you mai, and do not have hulls after maturity, while hulled oats have hulls after maturity. China mainly produces naked oats.

2. China is one of the centers of origin of oats. Wuchuan County in Inner Mongolia is one of the world's birthplaces of oats and is known as China's “hometown of oats”; it is one of the main high-cold crops, and is produced in most provinces and regions of China, but the concentrated production areas are the north and south of the Yinshan Mountains in Inner Mongolia, the Yinshan and Yanshan Mountains in Hebei, the Xishan, Taihang, and Luliang Mountains in Shuozhou, Shanxi, and high-altitude areas in China such as the Liupan Mountains, Helan Mountains, Qilian Mountains, and the Greater and Lesser Liang Mountains.

3. Oats are one of the grains eaten daily by Chinese people. In 1997, the US FDA recognized them as a functional food, and the US magazine “Time” selected them as fifth among the “top ten healthy foods in the world”; countries such as the United States, Japan, South Korea, Canada, and France call them the “family doctor”, “plant gold”, and “natural beautician”.

4. The grains of oats are used for grinding into flour. The more common ways to eat them are cooking porridge with oat rice, making pastries with oat flour, and making cakes with oat bran; it is a low-sugar, high-nutrition, high-energy food that can promote gastrointestinal peristalsis, lower blood lipids and blood sugar, prevent colorectal cancer, prevent heart disease, and also has beauty effects, and can treat dry skin and itching and so on.

2. What is the difference between oats and oatmeal?

Difference 1, different types: Oats are a kind of coarse grain, a kind of cereal, on the same level as wheat and corn. Oat grains can be processed into oatmeal; while oatmeal is a food processed with wheat as the raw material, made by processing ordinary wheat and some other things.

Difference 2, different ways of eating: Oats can be processed into oat rice, oat flour, oat biscuits, oatmeal, and oat pastries. Among them, oat flour can be used to make cakes, pastries, and so on, oat rice can be used to cook porridge, and oatmeal can be eaten after soaking; while oatmeal is simple to eat, generally soaked in water and drunk.

Difference 3, different value: Oats are rich in nutritional elements needed by the human body, and their nutritional value, medical and health care value, feed value, and health care effects are all high; while oatmeal, because it has been processed, is far inferior to oats in various values.

3. What is the difference between oats and wheat?

Difference 1, different types: Oats are an annual herb of the grass family, Avena genus, while wheat is an annual herbaceous plant of the grass family, Triticum genus.

Difference 2, different plants: The culms of oats are upright and smooth, the ligule is large, there are no auricles, the leaves are flat, the rachis is upright or drooping, and the spikelet stalks are curved and drooping; the culms of wheat are upright, clustered, the leaf sheaths are loose and sheath the stem, the ligule is membranous, and the leaves are long lanceolate.

Difference 3, different flowers: The flowers of oats are panicles, the inflorescence is terminal, and the spikelets contain 2 to several flowers, mostly longer than 2 cm; the flowers of wheat are spike-shaped flowers, the spikelets contain 3-9 florets, and the inflorescence is upright, 5-10 cm long.

Difference 4, different fruits: The ventral side of the oat fruit has a longitudinal groove, covered with sparse fine hairs, and the fruit powder is between gray and beige; the wheat fruit is oblate or oval, yellow-brown in color, slightly pointed or obtuse-rounded at both ends, and the fruit powder is white.

Difference 5, different effects: Oats are a low-sugar, high-nutrition, high-energy food, generally suitable for everyone to eat, and people with diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, arteriosclerosis, constipation, obesity, and so on can all eat them; wheat is not suitable for people with conditions such as diabetes.

Difference 6, different status: Oats are a kind of coarse grain, one of the high-grade tonics, one of the top ten healthy foods in the world, and an indispensable dry food in poor areas; wheat is one of the three major grains, one of humanity's staple foods, and one of China's most important food rations.

Oats are a kind of coarse grain, a low-sugar, high-nutrition, high-energy food. Many people can eat them, especially people with diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, arteriosclerosis, and so on. The above introduced the differences from oatmeal and wheat, and we hope it is useful to everyone.