Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 6, 1991                   TAG: 9102060013
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BEA LEWIS NEWSDAY
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long

OAT BRAN IS STILL A USEFUL PART OF DIET

Then last January, oat bran, which was the hottest health craze of the '80s, tumbled from its lofty tower. The full glare of publicity - screaming headlines and rolling TV cameras - turned to a Harvard University study published in the New England Journal of Medicine that found no significant differences in serum cholesterol levels between people who ate oat bran and those who ate products made with white flour.

Within weeks of the study's release, sales of the oat bran cookbook "dipped dramatically," Leahy said. Quaker Oats' oat bran sales "dropped by 50 percent," and Liederman's oat bran muffin business literally vanished.

How could one study abruptly halt the oat bran frenzy that had been fed by a dozen or so positive reports about its cholesterol-lowering benefits? Moreover, should we discard oat bran from our diet? And should we expect the same frenzy to surround rice bran oil, which got a boost from a highly publicized report earlier this month on its cholesterol-lowering benefits in monkeys?

The answers to these questions show more about ourselves than the relative merits of oat bran, which most experts will agree is a fine product and never belonged in high-fat potato chips or cakes anyway.

After years of oat bran hoopla, the contradictory study gave many "an excuse to go back to their old meat-and-potato ways of eating," said David Levitsky, a Cornell University psychologist and nutrition expert.

It is also natural for consumers "to walk away from confusing issues, to not buy the product," said David Stewart, a consumer psychologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

The hype over oat bran, "a food so homey," was so powerful, because it fulfilled strong emotional needs, said Levitsky. "It satisfied our dream to have a magic bullet, to have one single food to cure all our ills.

"The fact that this study didn't find any effect doesn't mean that none exists," Levitsky added. "We can't find the whole truth in any single study, and as far as oat bran, there have been numerous positive conclusions."

The craze skyrocketed in part because weak labeling laws allowed health claims to fuel our passion for simplistic solutions, said Robert Nicolosi, a Lowell (Mass.) University biochemist.

Then, too, according to University of Kentucky nutritionist Belinda Smith, "it was time for a little oat bran bashing. It soon became too much of a darling. It was in everything, it was everywhere."

Although oat bran cereal was introduced in 1983, with only a limited use "by only a well-read, health-conscious market," according to Ron Botrell, a Quaker Oats spokesman, "it wasn't until 1987 that the craze escalated."

That was when the U.S. government launched its Know Your Cholesterol campaign, and concern about cholesterol "became a top-of-the-mind issue," Botrell said. A flurry of extensive press followed, with every connection between oat bran and cholesterol covered.

But the biggest push came from Robert Kowalski's best-selling "The 8-Week Cholesterol Cure," a health-advice book advocating the use of oat bran, which jumped to best-seller status and stayed there for two years.

"It was one of the best-selling advice books at Harper and Row. Ever," Botrell of Quaker Oats said.

A year after the oat bran bubble burst, "sales are stable and steady; they're not declining," said Phil Lempert, an industry trend watcher who edits the Lempert Report.

It is not at the level it was a year and a half ago, he said, but "people who have a long-range and realistic approach to health still have oat bran and oatmeal in their cupboards, although not in their high-fat muffins."

"If people enjoy eating oatmeal or oat bran, I still recommend it for a low-fat, cholesterol-lowering diet," said Jayne Newmark, a nutritionist who counsels cardiac patients at the Arizona Heart Institute. "Oat bran is not a panacea, but, like eating more beans, more fish, more fruits and vegetables, oat bran offers that extra edge."

At the University of Kentucky, five studies led by fiber expert Dr. James Anderson, professor of medicine and clinical nutrition, have shown significant cholesterol-lowering results with soluble fiber, nutritionist Smith reports. Some of Anderson's studies, Smith said, have shown as much as a 13 percent to 19 percent drop in patients' cholesterol levels that were formerly high.

It is not the oat bran, per se, that is beneficial for cholesterol control, Smith said. The key is that oat bran (as well fruits, beans, and some other vegetables) provides a rich souce of water-soluble fiber, the kind of fiber that does the trick, she said. But oat bran by itself is also practical, versatile, safe and easy to use.

While it may not be that miracle cure we want it to be, nutritionists generally agree that oat bran is a good fiber food to be part of a low-fat diet. Its cholesterol-lowering benefits work for some, including Liederman, whose cholesterol dropped, he said, from 324 to 180 after he switched to a low-fat diet with plenty of oat bran in his homemade muffins.

"Bake with it, sprinkle it on cereal, use it for cereal, add as a filler for meatloaf or as a coating for cutlets," Smith advised.

Put in its proper perspective, oat bran is a good source of dietary fiber, which helps with weight loss, reducing the risk of cancer and controlling glucose tolerance, Nicolisi said. "Oat bran may have seen a dip in the fiber market, but it should come back again. "