5 interesting ways to include oats in your daily diet
This is a contribution post by Dr Surbhi Prapanna
Oats is one of the most highly nutritious substance that offers many health benefits. It is a complex carbohydrate that has an impressive nutritional profile. It is a great source of vitamins, minerals and fiber.
Scientific studies suggested that oats are a great choice of grain for people who are suffering from diabetes. It helps in controlling and managing increased sugar level effectively.
As per NCBI (National center for Biotechnology information),
“Oatmeal significantly reduced the acute postprandial glucose and insulin responses. It also had a beneficial effect on glucose control and lipid profiles in type 2 diabetic patients.”
Additionally, it also helped in losing weight due to high fiber content.
Though including oats in your routine diet offers many health benefits many people do not like the taste of oats. This is either because of its texture or they find it tasteless.
If you are someone who wants to include oats in your diet, but do not like the taste or texture of oats, this post is a perfect help for you.
With these ways, you can make oats tastier and can get all the amazing health benefits it offers.
Read on to know…
Interesting ways to include oats in your everyday diet!
Oats pancake or Chilla
This one is one of the best way to make oats tasty. Oats pancake or Chilla is an easy recipe and requires some basic and easily available ingredients. You can have it as your breakfast, lunch or dinner.
To make this, you will need 1 cup rolled oats, ½ cup semolina or sooji, ½ cup curd, ½ cup finely chopped veggies of your choice (carrot, corn, spinach, tomato etc.), and salt as per your taste. Make a medium thick consistency batter by mixing all ingredients and adding little water one at a time.
Cover the batter with a lid and let it rest it for 10-15 minutes. After that, apply a little ghee or oil on a pan and make pancake or Chilla the usual way. Cook it well on both sides, until it turns light brown. Within 5-10 minutes, your tasty oats pancake (or Chilla) is ready to enjoy.
You can serve this with any healthy dip (coriander or mint chutney) or curd raita.
Oats smoothie
This one is the second best option to include oats in your daily diet. Oats smoothie is easy to make and taste so good. It is a great way to start your day.
To make this you will need ½ cup rolled oats, 1 banana, natural sweetener of your choice (like maple syrup or honey), ½ cup seeds and nuts of your choice.
First, soak rolled oats in little water for 15-20 minutes. You can soak it overnight for a better texture. Next, soaked nuts and seeds of your choice (cashew, almond, pumpkin seeds etc.) for 15-20 minutes or overnight. As a natural sweetener, you can use either honey, banana, dates or coconut sugar.
First, add 1 cup of routine milk or any vegan milk (like almond or cashew milk) in a blender and then add soaked oats, banana, nuts and seeds one by one. Next, add soaked dates or other sweetener of your choice. You may skip sweetener, if you are adding banana. Banana work as a natural sweetener in this recipe.
Now, blend this for a few minutes and your tasty and healthy oats smoothie is ready to enjoy.
If you want you can other fruits like apple in this smoothie to enhance the nutritional value. you can also add cacao power to make a chocolate flavor oats smoothie.
Oats in baking recipes (oats cookies, baked oats)
This one is the best option for kids. Kids love baked recipes and including oats in baked recipes is one of best way to make it tastier. You can make easy three ingredients’ oats banana chocolate chips cookies or you can make “Baked oats” that taste like cake.
For making oats banana cookies, you will need rolled oats 1 cup, 1 ripe banana, 1 tsp vanilla extract, and ½ cup chocolate chips. Mixed all ingredients together properly. add little milk if mixture feel dry and make a cookie batter.
Spread cookies on greased baking tray and bake this for 10-15 minutes in 350-degree Fahrenheit Your tasty and healthy oats-banana cookies is ready to enjoy.
As another option, you can make “baked oats”. For making this, take 1 cup rolled oats, 1 egg, natural sweetener of your choice and vanilla extract 1 TSP. Blender this in blender for few minutes. Pour this mixture in a ramekin or mini baking tray and bake it for 15-20 minutes at 350-degree Fahrenheit. Your tasty and healthy “Baked oats” is ready to enjoy.
Oats snack recipes (like oats ladoo, oats chiwda)
Unhealthy snacking is one of the major cause of weight gain and it leads to intake of empty calories too. Including oats in your routine snack recipes are a great idea to make snack time healthier and nutritious.
You can add roasted oats along with roasted rice flakes to make oats chiwada. It is way healthier option than routine chiwda recipes.
As another option, you can also make oats ladoo (add oats flour with wheat flour in routine ladoo recipe) to make a delicious and healthy sweet snack. Both these recipes taste so good and much healthier than other routine snack recipes.
Savory oats recipes (like oats upma or oats khichdi)
If you are not in mood to try sweet oats recipes, you can make it savory but adding routine spices and veggies of your choice. In traditional upma and khichdi recipes, you can replace main grain like semolina and rice with oats and can make tasty savory oats dishes to enjoy a new flavor of oats.
So, these are some interesting ways to include oats in your everyday diet. Which one is your favorite? Share with us and get featured on BeStorified.
Dr. Surbhi Prapanna is a homeopathic therapist by profession and a writer and blogger by passion. She is the founder of India’s leading lifestyle blog surbhiprapanna.com.
She has more than 5 years of professional writing experience and her work has been published on various prestigious online platforms like Momspresso.com, kidstoppress.com, cureJoy.com and shivanaspirit.com.
Health, parenting and creative activities for kids (art, crafts, DIYs etc…) are her niche. She has won so many awards for her academic and professional excellence, but winning the “Best parent award” is the most precious and satisfying experience of her life. Connect with her here.
