Fun Facts
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Oatmeal Month is celebrated each January, the month in which we buy more oatmeal than any other month of the year. In January we stocked our pantries with 34.6 million pounds of oats; enough to make 346 million bowls of oatmeal.
The most popular oatmeal topping is milk. Other popular toppings are: sugar, fruit (raisins, bananas) and butter/margarine. Among the most unusual are: eggnog, peanut butter, cottage cheese and brewer's yeast.
Eighty percent of U.S. households have oatmeal in their cupboard.
Oatmeal cookies are the No. 1 non-cereal usage for oatmeal, followed by meatloaf and cakes/pies.
Oats were one of the earliest cereals cultivated by man. They were known in ancient China as long ago as 7,000 B.C. The ancient Greeks were the first people known to have made a recognizable porridge (cereal) from oats.
An 18-ounce package of Old Fashioned Oats contains about 26,000 rolled oats.
Americans eat oatmeal as a breakfast cereal 89 percent of the time; 11 percent of the time we use oatmeal as an ingredient.
The oat is called a groat after the hull has been removed.
Old Fashioned Oats are groats that are steamed and rolled but not cut. They cook in 5 minutes on the stove-top or 3 minutes in a microwave oven and can be used for baking.
Quick Oats are groats that are cut into two or three pieces, then steamed and rolled. They cook in just 1 minute on the stove-top or microwave oven and can also be used for baking.
Production and acreage of oats has declined steadily since 1945 when a record 1.5 billion bushels were produced utilizing 42 million acres.
Oat acreage has declined so readily, because oat demand has fallen. The main demand for oats comes as an animal feed, primarily horses. As the population of horses has declined, due to the introduction of the internal combustion engine, the demand and resources devoted to oats has decreased as well.
Over half of U.S. domestic oat production is grown in South Dakota, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa. Oats are grown less extensively in the Corn-Belt, Great Lakes, and the Plains. Relatively few oats are produced in the western and southern states. Almost half of the acreage planted for oats is harvested for grain, with the remainder being utilized for hay.
Source: GRAINGUIDE.COM.
Only about 5% of the world's oat crop is consumed as food by humans, the majority of the crop is fed to animals.
Oat flour is used in peanut butter, margarine and chocolate because it retards rancidity. It is used in ice cream and other dairy products as a fat stabilizer. So have some chocolate peanut butter ice cream and stay healthy!
Source: Food Reference Website, www.foodreference.com.
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