RD201906

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