A new study has shown that oatmeal can help healthy bacteria grow in people’s guts.
A high cholesterol level is a significant risk factor for coronary heart disease (CHD).
Oats and oat products have been proved to reduce cholesterol.
In the new study, researchers from Southeast University in China and other research institutes enrolled 210 Chinese adults with mildly high cholesterol from Beijing, Nanjing and Shanghai.
They asked them to have 80 grammes of oats or rice every day for 45 days and measured their lipid and fatty acid levels and microbiota levels in their faeces.
The results were published in the journal Frontiers in Immunology.
The study showed that the oats group had more cholesterol-dropping results.
The people who had oats every day had their total cholesterol level lower by 5.7 per cent and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (also called bad cholesterol) down by 8.7 per cent.
The percentage in the rice group were only 3.0 per cent and 3.9 per cent.
The study also found that oats consumption increased the abundance of bacteria previously shown to protect against metabolic disease, obesity and CHD.
The researchers said their study demonstrated that oats could help healthy bacteria grow in the gut.
It then contributed to its cholesterol-lowering effect. (Xinhua/NAN)