Oats vs Barley for Cholesterol: Which Breakfast Grain Wins?

The quick answer, in one table

Oats vs barley (jau) for cholesterol

Now the details, so you know why we say this.

Oats vs barley for cholesterol: why both work

Oats and jau both have a fibre called beta-glucan. When you cook it, it turns sticky, like the water from soaked isabgol. In the stomach this sticky gel holds on to bile and cholesterol, so less of it goes back into the blood. That is the simple story behind both grains.

The food rule. The US food authority (FDA) allows oat and barley foods to carry a heart health claim. The rule says the benefit comes from "3 g or more per day of beta-glucan soluble fiber from either whole oats or barley". Each serving must give at least 0.75 g. The oat foods named are oat bran, rolled oats, whole oat flour. The barley foods named are whole grain barley and dry-milled barley. The claim is always "as part of a diet low in saturated fat", so the grain is a helper, not a free pass.

So in the oats vs barley for cholesterol fight, the real question is not "which grain". The question is "which grain will you really eat, every day, for months". Keep that in mind while you read.

Oats for cholesterol: what the studies say

Plain rolled oats. This is the form the studies used.

Oats have the most proof of any breakfast grain. A 2014 review pooled 28 trials. People who ate 3 g or more of oat beta-glucan a day, compared to people who did not:

• Bad cholesterol (LDL) went down by 0.25 mmol/L. That is about 10 mg/dL.
• Total cholesterol went down by 0.30 mmol/L. About 12 mg/dL.
• Good cholesterol (HDL) and triglycerides did not change.

The doses in the trials ran from 3 g to 12.4 g of beta-glucan a day. The benefit is real but modest. A 10 mg/dL drop will not fix a report of 180. It will help a report of 130 move toward 120. Think of oats as one of five or six habits, not the cure.

Jau for cholesterol: what the studies say

Jau gets less attention, but the proof is just as solid.

Health Canada's review. Canada's health authority went through the barley trials and allowed a cholesterol-lowering claim for barley foods. Their words: scientific evidence exists "in support of the therapeutic claim". In the better-quality trials, bad cholesterol went down by 0 to 0.32 mmol/L (0% to 8.5%). Across all the trial groups, 94% showed a drop in bad cholesterol. The daily amount for the claim is 3 g of barley beta-glucan.

A 2016 review of 14 trials from 7 countries found about a 7% drop in bad cholesterol with barley foods. The amounts used were higher, around 6.5 to 6.9 g of beta-glucan a day.

One nice extra about jau. In many grains, the good fibre sits only in the outer bran layer. Polish the grain, and the fibre is gone. In barley, the beta-glucan is found all through the grain. That is why the FDA list includes pearl barley, barley flour, flakes and grits, not just whole barley. So the pearl jau or jau atta you get in the market still has the fibre.

Health Canada's list also says what does not count: extracted beta-glucan. More on that in the barley water question below.

Oats vs barley for sugar: jau wins clearly

Many people with high cholesterol also have high sugar, or are heading there. Here jau is the clear winner.

The sugar score (GI) tells how fast a food raises blood sugar. Under 55 is low. Over 70 is high. From the standard tables and a 2015 review of oat products:

Jau at 28 is one of the lowest grains in the whole table. For a family with both cholesterol and sugar in the house, that matters.

Note the oats row too. Rolled oats are fine. Instant oats are not. The 2015 review explains why in plain words: the finer the oat is cut and the more it is pre-cooked, the faster it turns into sugar in your body.

Which oats are best for cholesterol

Buy the plain, bigger flake. Skip the sachet.

Go by this list, best first.

1. Steel-cut oats. Whole oats chopped into pieces. Takes 20 to 25 minutes to cook. Lowest sugar rise among oats.
2. Rolled oats (large flake). The common "rolled oats" pack. Cooks in 5 to 10 minutes. Low sugar rise. This is the easy, good choice.
3. Oat bran. Named in the FDA rule. Can be mixed into atta.
4. Quick and instant oats. Cut small and pre-cooked. Sugar score 71 to 75. Not a good choice if your sugar is also high.
5. Flavoured and masala oat sachets. These were not what the trials used. Read the pack. If sugar, salt or maida sit high in the list, it is a snack, not a medicine.

How to read the pack. Some packs print "beta-glucan per serving". The FDA rule needs 0.75 g per serving. So 4 such servings a day give you the 3 g. If the pack does not print it, pick plain rolled or steel-cut oats, and do not worry about the exact number.

What the old books say

Jau is in the book. Oats are not.

Charaka, in his chapter on people with too much body fat (Sutra Sthana, chapter 21), lists what they should eat. The grains he names start with yava, which is jau. He also names mudga (moong), kulattha (horse gram), patola (parwal) and amalaka (amla). In the chapter on prameha, the old name for sugar disease (Chikitsa Sthana, chapter 6), he again gives barley, including roasted barley, old rice with moong, and barley with honey for one type of prameha.

Oats are not in any old Indian book. They are a grain from cold countries and came to India much later. That does not make oats bad. It just means the proof for oats is modern proof only. For jau you have both: the old books and the modern trials.

One more old rule, since so many people cook oats in milk. The old books say sour things should not be mixed with milk. So do not put sour fruit (orange, pineapple, berries) into milk oats. Cook oats in water, or in plain milk with nuts. If you want fruit, eat it separately.

5 Indian ways to eat them

1. Jau roti (jau roti benefits start here)

Mix jau atta with your wheat atta. Start with 1 part jau to 3 parts wheat, so the roti still rolls well. Move to half and half when the family gets used to it. This is the easiest way to eat jau every single day without a new dish.

2. Jau khichdi with moong dal

Pearl jau, soaked 1 to 2 hours, cooked with moong dal, turmeric, cumin and a spoon of ghee. Charaka himself pairs barley and moong in the prameha diet. A good light dinner, eaten before sunset if you can.

3. Jau sattu

Roasted jau flour, mixed into water with a pinch of salt, roasted cumin and lemon. Charaka names roasted barley in the prameha chapter. A filling mid-morning drink. Skip the sugar version.

4. Oats upma

Rolled oats dry roasted, then cooked like upma with onion, mustard seeds, curry leaves, carrot, beans and peas. Vegetables add more fibre. This is the way to make oats taste like food, not hospital food.

5. Plain oats porridge, done right

Rolled or steel-cut oats cooked in water. Top with a spoon of crushed alsi and a few almonds. No sugar. A little jaggery if you must, and only if your sugar is normal. Dahi on the side is fine at breakfast, never at night.

What about barley water for cholesterol (jau ka pani)?

Jau ka pani is popular, and it is a pleasant drink. But the trials used the grain. Health Canada's rule covers "dehulled or hulless barley, pearl barley, barley flakes, grits, meal, flour, bran" and clearly excludes extracted beta-glucan. We did not find a trial of barley water and cholesterol. So drink it if you like it, but do not throw the boiled jau away. Eat the jau. That is where the fibre is.

Oats vs barley for cholesterol: 4 mistakes that waste the benefit

• Oats with 2 spoons of sugar. Sugar and white flour push triglycerides up. You lose more than you gain.
• Instant oats, because they are quick. Sugar score 75. Buy rolled oats and give it 5 more minutes.
• Oats once a week. Every trial above ran for weeks, every day. One bowl on Sunday does nothing.
• Oats in the morning, puri at night. The FDA claim itself says "as part of a diet low in saturated fat". The grain cannot undo the rest of the plate.

Oats vs barley for cholesterol is a good question. The better one is: what else am I doing?

A bowl of jau or oats gives you about 10 mg/dL. The rest comes from the whole day. Ayuvya's Care of Cholesterol juice is built from Ayurvedic herbs for exactly this daily support, and every order comes with a simple Indian diet chart that fits jau roti, sattu and oats upma into a normal day. See Care of Cholesterol, or read our isabgol for cholesterol guide for another sticky-fibre helper.

Related reading: Indian breakfast for cholesterol · How to lower triglycerides · Rice or roti for diabetes

This article is for general information. It is not medical advice. Oats and jau help a little; they do not replace medicine. If your cholesterol is high, talk to your doctor before changing or stopping any treatment. Numbers are from the studies listed below, converted from mmol/L to mg/dL where needed (1 mmol/L = 38.67 mg/dL).

Sources

1. US FDA, 21 CFR 101.81, Health claims: soluble fiber from certain foods and risk of coronary heart disease. law.cornell.edu
2. FDA press release on the barley health claim, December 2005 (via BioSpace), listing qualifying barley products. biospace.com
3. Whitehead A, Beck EJ, Tosh S, Wolever TMS. Cholesterol-lowering effects of oat beta-glucan: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2014. 28 trials. eprints.lancs.ac.uk
4. Health Canada. Summary of Health Canada's assessment of a health claim about barley products and blood cholesterol lowering. canada.ca
5. Vuksan V and colleagues. Meta-analysis of 14 randomised trials of barley foods and cholesterol. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2016, doi:10.1038/ejcn.2016.89 (as reported by NutraIngredients).nutraingredients.com
6. Tosh SM, Chu Y. Systematic review of the effect of processing of whole-grain oat cereals on glycaemic response. British Journal of Nutrition, 2015. cambridge.org
7. Atkinson FS, Foster-Powell K, Brand-Miller JC. International tables of glycemic index and glycemic load values: 2008. Diabetes Care. Pearl barley GI 28. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
8. Charaka Samhita, Sutra Sthana chapter 21 (diet for excess body fat) and Chikitsa Sthana chapter 6 (prameha). carakasamhitaonline.com