Oat, as an excellent food with comprehensive nutrition and balanced energy, especially as a popular "breakfast staple food", has recently attracted more and more attention from domestic consumers. How to choose the best and most suitable oat food on the market? Here we have compiled some "gold standards" for you to choose oats.
The first thing to explain is the common types and basic selection basis of oat food. Oat is a kind of food crop, and its edible value is very rich, so oats can be processed into many different foods. To buy oatmeal, you must first know what kind of food you need: what kind of oatmeal do you need? Oatmeal Refined oatmeal? Or is it a deep-processed food made of oats mixed with other foods?
Different kinds of oat food aim at different market demands. For ordinary consumers, the reasons for choosing oat food are often similar. The "4S Gold Label", the largest brand in the domestic oat market, is such a representative conclusion.
One of the gold standards: place of origin
Many people are familiar with the allusions of orange-born Huainan. Food crops take root and sprout, not as wild as livestock and poultry. Therefore, for any widely planted agricultural products, its origin characteristics play a decisive role in the quality of its products from the beginning.
Oat is a kind of crop that is sensitive to water and soil. Only when the altitude is high, the four seasons are distinct and the rainfall can meet the demand, can we select and cultivate better oat varieties. For example, Ximai chooses oat varieties produced in the low altitude plateau of Western Australia. Due to the suitable compatibility of soil and water, this kind of oat has unique large and full particles and soft and delicate taste, and it has also become the first choice for "original ecological" foods such as oats in developed countries.
The common oat planting areas in China choose naked oat varieties. Although there is no significant difference in nutritional components between domestic oats and skin oats, the difference in appearance and taste makes most domestic oats can only be processed into coarse oat flour or used as raw materials for other deep-processed foods, and it is difficult to find their own position in bagged or canned oats sold in supermarkets.
The second gold standard: products
We ordinary consumers buy oatmeal mainly in places like large supermarkets. Then, the raw grain and oat flour, which mainly supply the catering market, are generally difficult for us to contact. Oat foods we often come into contact with can be divided into three categories: "original" pure oatmeal, various cereal foods with oatmeal as the main component, and other kinds of foods or drinks with oatmeal as the main component. When buying these products, we must pay attention to choosing the most suitable food from our own needs.
Generally speaking, if you choose "oatmeal breakfast" instead of snacks, I would suggest you choose plain oatmeal. Oat has the characteristics of balanced energy and low sugar and the effect of maintaining blood sugar balance, which is why it has become the first choice for breakfast staple food. Of course, if you like instant oatmeal with milk flavor or sugar flavor, you can also choose compound oatmeal. These products often contain certain milk powder and sugar components, which can be directly blended.
However, it should be noted that whether you choose pure oats or compound oats, you must choose big brands. For example, the oat products of Ximai only choose "skin oats" rich in dietary fiber for 6 months. However, some oat products that take the low-cost route will "cut corners" in product selection due to cost considerations, and then add a lot of dextrin made of starch. Such food has actually deviated from the healthy and nutritious essence of oat food.
When buying pure oatmeal, you should also consider your cooking habits and conditions. Sago's pure oatmeal mainly includes two kinds: instant oatmeal and instant oatmeal. The former only needs to be boiled for 3 minutes, and the latter can be eaten by soaking in boiling water for 3 minutes, which is a relatively quick and convenient diet plan. If you choose other kinds of pure oatmeal, you must pay attention to the cooking method, because raw oatmeal is not a delicious food.
The third gold standard: certification
Supermarket is a more formal retail channel, so when choosing oat food in such a place, you can be more picky about the "origin" of the product. It depends on which authoritative certification the brand or manufacturer has passed, which can make you buy more assured and eat more assured.
National green food certification is one of the certification systems that people who advocate the concept of "original ecology" can trust, and it is also the direction that big oat brands in the domestic market strive to achieve. Sago Oats, made of imported oat raw materials from Australia, became the first oat product in Australia to pass the green food certification in China, and passed many international and domestic certifications such as "green food certification" and "ISO22000 certification". If you buy this product, you can pay attention to the green food certification and other signs on the package.
The fourth gold standard: technology
Many people will think that the production process and technology of the manufacturer are difficult for ordinary consumers to contact, so it is not very important; But this view is problematic. You should know that the oat food you can buy in the supermarket should not only be excellent green agricultural products with guaranteed origin and certification, but also be excellent food processed products that can stand the test of modern consumer society.
Take pure oatmeal products as an example. The pure oatmeal you see in the supermarket is not simply to put the ears of oats in the field in a packaging bag and send them to the shelf. In order to ensure the quality and convenience of products, raw oats should be screened, cut, aged, baked (pure raw oats can never be cooked within 3 minutes) and sealed before being delivered to consumers. Therefore, the technical content in this production process determines the quality of a manufacturer's products.
Take the most understandable link as an example: As we all know, oats are rich in protein, and the amino acid composition is very balanced. Protein is very easy to "degenerate" at high temperature. Long-term high temperature treatment can make oats easy to digest, but it will also destroy the nutritional components of oats. This is an intractable contradiction. Advanced science and technology enterprises like Ximai adopt "low temperature baking" technology, which can not only ensure the taste, but also ensure the nutrition, which is also one of the successful applications of industrialized processing technology in the field of agricultural products production.