RD201906

(avery) #1

Oatmeal


How a Weed


Grew into a


Health Hero


By Kate Lowenstein
and Daniel Gritzer

Oats. A grain, which in England
is generally given to horses, but in
Scotland supports the people.
—A Dictionary of the English
Language by Samuel Johnson (1755)

T


hat, if you can believe it, is how
the venerable Dr. Johnson, in
what was the language’s guiding
reference until the appearance of The
Oxford English Dictionary 173 years
later, chose to define me. Me! Ouch.
But that was then, when Scotland was
indeed among the only places where
humans fed on me. Thankfully for
me, and for your cholesterol ratios,
I’ve come a long way in the 264 years
since. And the famed Englishman’s
dig at both me and the Scots now
looks as foolish as his word for a burp
of undigested meat. (For the record,
the word is nidorosity.)
It has been a wild ride, and from
inauspicious roots. I began as a seed
that grew in pods at the tops of tower-
ing, five-foot-tall weeds called green
oat grasses, which littered the wheat
and barley fields of yore. About a cen-
tury after Dr. Johnson’s dis, a German
immigrant grocer in Akron, Ohio, by
the name of Ferdinand Schumacher
realized—long after the Scots had—
that once removed from my hull,
chopped, and cooked, I made a fine
cereal. To process me, he figured out
how to steam and roll me flat so that
I could be cooked more quickly. Then
he experimented with selling me in
his small store.

rd.com | june 2019 39

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Reader’s Digest

I Am the

FOOD


ON YOUR


PLATE

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