Are Oats Worse Than Ice Cream? Four Claims, Checked

Many types of posts on social media platforms can lead to a lot of confusion around what is a ‘healthy’ and ‘not healthy’ food. A good example of this is the hate directed at rolled oats (of all foods!) It gets accused of being a peasant food that spikes blood sugar harder than white sugar or ice cream, has almost no protein and the fibre pulls minerals out of you. And, often, it is loaded with glyphosate.

These claims are a good example of how this kind of content works. Four claims, delivered fast, each with just enough truth in it that the whole thing sounds researched. It can be useful to scrutinise these claims as how they apply to the general population, many of whom enjoy oats as part of their everyday diet.

"It spikes blood sugar harder than white sugar or ice cream"

Mostly wrong, with one exception. I will out the gate say that the glycaemic index (GI) of a food is interesting, for sure, but how applicable it is to your blood sugar response is debatable. It is an average value of how quickly the glucose from carbohydrate-based foods hit the blood stream and increase blood sugar over a 2h period. You are not an average. An Israeli study in 2015 found we have very individual responses to diverse carbohydrate foods (ranging from fruit to cookies/biscuits) so that is definitely worth addressing.

That said, rolled oats test at a GI of around 55 in the international tables, and steel cut lower again, roughly 42 to 50, because the intact groat takes longer to break down. Table sugar sits at 65. So plain oats do not beat sugar. Now, get your oats from an instant sachet and that is a different story. Both plain and flavoured sachets test into the 70s and 80s. If your oats come in a paper packet with a flavour name on it, it can be digested and absorbed pretty quickly.

That oats spike your blood sugar more than ice cream is not comparing apples with apples. Ice cream tests low on GI largely because it's full of fat, and fat slows glucose uptake. Chocolate cake does the same thing. Beating ice cream on GI tells you about fat content, not about food quality, and a biohacking influencer is going to know this. A better comparison would be to load those oats up with butter and see what difference there is (I’m recommending you do this as much as I might recommend you make ice cream a daily habit, for what it’s worth!)

Further, a meta-analysis of 103 trial comparisons found that oat beta-glucan, the soluble fibre in oats, reduced post-meal glucose area under the curve by 23% and peak glucose by 28%, with insulin down by a similar margin. This is considered high certainty evidence, and the effect held in people with and without diabetes. The fibre in oats does the opposite of what's being claimed.

"Almost no protein"

Compared to a chicken breast? Of course! Compared to other grains? Rolled oats contain 13.2 g of protein per 100 g dry, which is not nothing.

The criticism around protein holds more for the quality rather than quantity. Oat protein is limited in lysine, so on its own it's not a standout. But that's an argument for adding protein to your oats, which most of you have heard me say for other reasons anyway. A 40 g serve of oats gives you about 5 g of protein. That is not a breakfast. Oats plus 30 g of protein from egg whites, high protein yoghurt, a scoop of powder or eggs on the side is a breakfast, and it flattens the glucose response too.

"Fibre that pulls minerals out of you"

So, in this case the mechanism is real, but it’s sort of the other way around.

Phytic acid in grains binds minerals in the gut and reduces how much you absorb from that meal. In a human trial, zinc absorption from malted oat porridge with reduced phytate was 18.3% compared with 11.8% from regular porridge, with iron absorption improving alongside it. So yes, phytate lowers uptake. What it does not do is strip minerals out of your bones or tissues, which is exactly what "pulls minerals out of you" is designed to make you picture. It binds what's in the bowl. It doesn't leach what's in you.

Two things finish this one off. First, 100 g of oats delivers 158% of the daily value for manganese, 33% for magnesium, 33% for zinc, 33% for phosphorus and 24% for iron. Even with reduced fractional absorption and coming from a food that has lower bioavailability of these minerals, that's a net contribution. Second, a controlled human study found a high oat bran intake did not impair zinc absorption when it was added to a diet based on animal protein.

So, while phytate is a legitimate concern in populations where unrefined cereal porridge is the main source of calories and iron intake is already marginal, it is not a meaningful concern for someone eating oats alongside meat, eggs, dairy and vegetables. As is often the case in nutrition, context is everything. The claim that eating phytate-rich grains impairs mineral status requires context and test tube digestion studies (not human trials) are routinely used to promote conclusions that don't hold up in people.

"Loaded with glyphosate"

This is the claim with the most substance, and it's also in part geographically determined. This is the one I think about a bit with food choices that I make also.

The alarming numbers come from the US. Testing by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) detected glyphosate in 43 of 45 products made with conventionally grown oats, with 31 above EWG's own children's health benchmark. The driver is pre-harvest application to dry the crop down before harvest, which leaves little time for breakdown.

Two things to be precise about. EWG's benchmark of 160 parts per billion is their own figure, not a regulatory limit, and it sits far below what regulators use. And the US EPA's own review concluded there were no dietary risks of concern for any population group, even under its most conservative assumptions. On cancer, IARC classified glyphosate as probably carcinogenic in 2015, while EFSA and the FAO/WHO joint meeting both concluded it was unlikely to pose a carcinogenic risk through diet. That disagreement is not resolved. I’m not saying this to absolve glyphosate at all, but this is what I found in my looking into it.

If you're in Australia: the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) regulates use and sets residue limits with FSANZ, and pre-harvest desiccation is a registered use. The National Residue Survey found glyphosate above the maximum residue limit in 1 of 42 oat samples in 2014-15, and in 1 of 35 oat samples in the following report. FSANZ monitors glyphosate through the Australian Total Diet Study and has consistently found dietary exposure to be very low with no safety concerns.

If you're in New Zealand: New Zealand Food Safety consulted through 2025 on changing glyphosate residue limits, and in October 2025 decided to hold the limit at 0.1 mg/kg for wheat, barley and oats. Independent accredited-lab testing of six popular New Zealand oat products found no detectable glyphosate above 0.010 mg/kg, though that reflects those batches rather than every bag on the shelf, since our oats are both locally grown and imported.

So "often loaded with" looks different depending on where you live. It appears the most effective way is to reduce your exposure (i.e. there is no supplement that would help ‘detoxify’).

So, the big picture here is that a big bowl of plain instant oats is a high-carb, low-protein breakfast that leaves a lot of people hungry by ten.

To circumvent this, here are some tips:

• Buy rolled or steel cut, not instant sachets
• Have 30 g of protein with it, not as an afterthought (adding protein powder, egg whites, eggs (a savoury bowl) with high protein yoghurt)
• Choose a portion matched to what you're actually doing that day, which for those of you training long is a very different number to a desk day
• If concerned about pesticides, buy organic oats.

For what it's worth, oat beta-glucan has an evidence base for lowering LDL cholesterol, non-HDL cholesterol and apoB across meta-analyses of randomised controlled trials. That's a stronger foundation than anything on the other side of this argument.