Overnight Fermented Oats

This is a much healthier way to consume oatmeal for all of you oatmeal lovers! You can consume these raw or cooked. Soaking and fermenting the oats helps break down anti-nutrients like phytic acid and lectins to make it more digestible and makes the nutrients more bio-available. Oats are 1.49% phytic acid. Some nutrients that phytic acid likes to bond to are calcium, magnesium, iron, potassium, copper, selenium and manganese. Soaking alone eliminates 60% of the phytic acid. Fermenting breaks it down further by forming organic acids. Soaking and fermenting can result in 83% of the phytic acid being broken down, especially when using probiotics such as saccharomyces diasticus, S. cerevisiae, lacto-bacillus brevis, and L. fermentum. Use organic oats to avoid glyphosates. I also buy gluten free oats. The only reason they would have gluten is from cross contamination from other crops nearby. The probiotics will also eat up much of the starch, resulting in a lower carb oatmeal.

This picture demonstrates the difference between soaking in water alone and soaking with probiotics. You can easily see how much the probiotics have broken down the oats and makes it easier to understand and believe how our gut microbiome truly do help in digestion, which is something that was NEVER taught to me in school.

If you plan to cook the oats after soaking (which will obviously kill the bacteria but still have the other benefits of breaking down the anti nutrients and making it more digestible), you don’t need to measure the water. Just cover the oats with filtered or distilled water, add a pinch of probiotic powder and stir in. I would not add more than 1/3 capsule. You can also add whey from home made kefir or yogurt. I add at least a tbsp per cup of oats. If you plan to eat the oats raw then use a 1:1 ratio with oats and water. One cup of oats would use one cup of water, plus the probiotic powder. Soak for 12 hours. Soaking for more than 24 hours will result in a mushy and bitter tasting mess.

You can cook or not, then eat as you normally would. I like to add home made kefir or fermented nut milk if I have it on hand, and a little monk fruit for sweetness. I don’t eat oats often as I try to keep my carbs below 20-30 g per day but when I do this is the only way I will eat them.

Enjoy!