First Food Friday!

It is our first Food Friday. Friday's are going to be all about food. Making it. Eating it. Appreciating it. Loving it. Unless you find it an onerous task to eat, you, like Nicole and I, have a special relationship with our food. We love our food; savor it, but we also hate it when the foods that we love hate us back. We hate it when it makes us fat, or makes us bloat or when it causes an allergic reaction.

In our Food Friday blogs, we hope to explore our relationship with food and making it healthier and more productive. Food shouldn't only feed the body, but it should also feed the soul.

Today we talk about Oats. Civilizations have enjoyed and been sustained by this powerful little grain for centuries. Devotees have suggested that a bowl of oats a day is much better than an apple for keeping the doctor away.

According to A2Z Health, Beauty and Fitness and the American Cancer Society the 6 main reasons that oats are so good for you stems from the fact that they are a good source of soluble and insoluble fibre.

1. Insoluble fiber's cancer-fighting properties are due to the fact that it attacks certain bile acids, reducing their toxicity.

2. Soluble fiber may reduce LDL cholesterol without lowering HDL cholesterol. LDL is bad; HDL is good.

3. Soluble fiber slows down the digestion of starch. This may be beneficial to diabetics because, when you slow down the digestion of starch, you avoid the sharp rises in your blood sugar level that usually occur following a meal.

4. It has been found that those who eat more oats are less likely to develop heart disease, a disease that is currently widespread in the United States.

5. The phytochemicals in oat may also have cancer-fighting properties.

6. Oats are a good source of many nutrients including vitamin E, zinc, selenium, copper, iron, manganese and magnesium. Oats are also a good source of protein.

Despite knowing these facts, most people find eating oats (and we're not talking about the pre-packaged, flavoured kind-we're talking steel cut or whole) unpalatable. So one of our resident food bloggers Sandi Stiel (owner of The Stuffed Pantry) has given us the recipe for Oatmeal Muffin Recipe! (find the recipe in the right hand margin in our Food Friday Recipe Box) Delish! Enjoy!