Comment by wgjordan

Yeah this is a really wild experiment.

Their hypothesis for the mechanism is "gut bacteria" but these people in the study all had a trifecta of "high" body weight (overweight? obese? not specified in this article), high blood pressure, and hyperlipidemia.

So we've got some unhealthy people, we cut their calories to less than half, we jack their fiber way up (most likely - we don't know their baseline diet but with those biomarkers we can make some educated guesses), we restrict the timing of when they eat and remove all junk food.

So is this oatmeal specifically? Fiber? Calorie deficit? Meal timing effects? Removal of processed food for two days?

The idea that you can "shock" your body to better biomarkers like this and have it last over a month is extremely cool, but I wonder how they can be certain that this is some oatmeal thing versus a general "eat way less and limit yourself to a food that is high in fiber" thing.

The low protein here is a problem when in a calorie deficit, for example, because if you don't have enough protein you're likely to lose weight as muscle mass rather than fat. If you could do the same technique with legumes your protein would be way better.

The paper does a better job explaining why oats were chosen:

> Oats offer an interesting and promising approach for treating MetS due to their unique composition characterized by a high fiber content, especially β-glucan, essential minerals and vitamins, and various bioactive substances, including phenols which exert antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects that may improve metabolic function. Furthermore, oats are an accessible and sustainable food item.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-68303-9

Yeah, the article showed that the high-dose intervention (modeled after von Noorden's famous century-old 'oat cure') is most effective. A large bowl of oatmeal (100g) all 3 meals for 2 days, 6 large bowls total.

6 weeks of 'oatmeal for breakfast every day' was less effective than 2 days of 'stuff yourself with oatmeal'.

It's quite a bit of volume, but it's "only" about 1000 Calories if it doesn't have any oils/sugar added.

I'd guess the easiest way to get it down would be to just blend the oats into water without cooking so you have something that you can just drink like water.

i mean we talkin cooked or uncooked?

88g dry may get much heavier after adding 3/4 cups water

Probably two days a month would suffice, given how long the beneficial effects are reported to last.