You are doing a big study on oats. Why?
Oats are a very big crop in Ireland. They grow well here and they are important for the Irish economy. We know oats have real health benefits – they can support cardiovascular health because of the beta-glucan fibre they contain. But we also know that to fully benefit from beta-glucan for cardiovascular health, we need around 3g a day. So depending on how much beta-glucan a particular oat contains, you might need to consume very different amounts of it to reach that level.
What has the NutriOats project found so far?
We grew 95 cultivars [purposely cultivated varieties] in Teagasc Oak Park and tested them in Moorepark [the food research centre in Cork] and we measured beta-glucan in all of them. It ranged from 2.8 per cent, where you would need to eat two-and-a-half bowls of porridge to get 3g of beta-glucan, to 6.6 per cent, where one bowl and an extra spoon would be enough. The main cultivar grown in Ireland is Husky, and it sits in the middle of that range.
We also found a two-fold difference in the levels of proteins between the lowest and highest cultivars. The highest would offer 9.2g of protein in a standard bowl of porridge. That’s about the same as one-and-a-half boiled eggs.
Why is it important to know the different nutritional offerings of oat cultivars?
It means that when we are figuring out what cultivars to grow in Ireland, we can include that information in the decision-making. The project is funded by Research Ireland and we have people on the team from Teagasc and University College Cork who are experts in agriculture, so they understand growing conditions and resilience against pests and the yield of crops. Then my PhD student Nefeli Lampoglou and I were able to identify the cultivars that can offer relatively high levels of protein or of soluble and other fibres, which may benefit consumers. Depending on what you want, you can get it from different oats.
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You’ve also researched starch digestion and the control of blood sugar. Tell us about that.
Glycemic control, or the control of blood sugar, is my passion. When we digest starches the carbohydrates get broken down into sugars and, for good health, we want to minimise rapid rises to high levels of sugars in our blood. My research looks at what happens when we make a meal more acidic, to see if it can reduce the activity of the enzyme in our saliva that starts breaking down starch into sugars, and so delay and reduce the blood sugar peak from the starches. The next phase of the NutriOats project will be to look at how cultivars are digested.
How did you come to work in this field?
I did my bachelor’s in human nutrition in Portugal, where I am from, then a European masters in food innovation, which was based partly in Ireland, partly in France. I stayed in France to do my PhD in human nutrition, and when I finished, I moved to Ireland and started working in Teagasc. I’ve been here ever since.
What do you wish people understood better about nutrition?
I encourage people not to put foods into categories like “bad foods”. Those types of labels on foods are not helpful. Instead I like to promote the idea of balance.
And what do you like to do outside research?
If I’m not at work, I’m with my daughter and my partner. We enjoy the usual family things, we like going for walks.
