Ready Brek and digestivity.

I’ve had a quandary for several years in that the traditional porridge before big days, or just in general always does seem to give me a good amount of diesel energy and does what it says on the tin. However, in the past 10 years or so it has always come with an hour or so of digestive discomfort and some reflux issues, sometimes making me even more tired for a whole. Happens with everything from oatmeal up to jumbo steel cut oats.

However I had an idea this week and decided to try some Ready Brek. It tastes* and looks like baby food but no problems whatsoever, and seems to give me the same amount of pep in my step. Do you think this is just because it’s presumably a higher GI, and can be digested more efficiently? It’s just oats put in a blender right, so presumably I can make my own?

*Not necessarily a bad thing – experimented with mixing some Ovaltine in this morning and it was delicious. The texture is quite pleasing.

 It’s just oats put in a blender right, so presumably I can make my own?

Yup, I make some DIY instant Ready Brek by doing that (only put about 1/3 to 1/2 of the oats in the  blender if you still want some texture  and only blitz them for a second to bash them into pieces not grind them into flour.

Then add powdered milk and brown caster sugar.  Obviously this is not in real ready brek, and the Scottish contingent will whine that real porridge is made with water, unsweetened and tastes like wallpaper paste.  But it does mean you can then make it with just boiling water on backpacking trips or in the office kitchen.

Ready brek is going to a quicker and shorter energy boost than proper oats.  Have you tried making the porridge without dairy, you’ll be hard pushed to tell the difference with something like Oatly.

I was gonna say maybe the dairy is the issue rather than oats themselves

I’m making it with oatly, it’s really nice. Especially with a spoon of whisky on top.

I guess ready brek is a processed food so I imagine a quicker/ shorter lived energy hit from it but I’m a builder so what do I know.

Thanks for the blender tip, I use it for backpack trips so that’s a good idea

Racing friend i have eats baby food for endurance races (12s and 24s).

Swears by it, says ‘lot less digestion required and all the food groups are represented’.

How are you with bread?

Have you tried using boiling water on proper oats, with just a dash of cold milk, a tiny sprinkle of salt and perhaps some sliced banana?

Have you tried soaking the oats overnight so that they have softened up already. Makes them quicker to cook and much easier on the stomach in the AM. Or soaking w yoghurt and milk and making it a bircher muesli kind of thing

I’ve tried with and without milk (and am fine with dairy in general, though don’t have it too often), overnight soaked and made there and then and not much seems to make a difference. It’s quite weird. I am part of the scottish contingent myself and fully believe that making it with water is lunacy though.

Bread I am generally fine with too (again don’t eat it too much), and weirdly things like stoats bars, flapjacks are even muesli doesn’t affect me like hot porridge does.

Thanks for the tip re: making my own, I have a massive box of oats in the cupboard that I might run through the mill and test some different grades. What fun for a weekend!

Ready Brek is carbs with added carbs. Total sugar fest.

@lambchop – I’m aware! That’s kind of the point though if I’m doing something big that day.

@elray89 better off with bacon and eggs for sustained energy and satiety. No gut rot or reflux either as no fibre which is inflammatory

@lambchop – tried that approach a fair bit. Didn’t work for me as well as porridge unfortunately, in terms of giving my legs power.

I’ve got IBS and always struggled with porridge so a dietitian suggested instant oat sachets (so Ready Brek without sugar) as they’d be easier to digest. I don’t use real milk either though for an unrelated issue.

My breakfast every day is 100g of oats blitzed up with 7 different types of seed, walnuts, raisins, ginger, cinnamon, tumeric, cocoa powder, coffee, kale and 375 ml of water and in the fridge overnight.

Loads of energy in that, certainly never feel like I’m crashing after at any point and easy on the digestion.

I struggle with ‘fresh made’ porridge, but if I do it as overnight oats I have no issues at all. I do it with some milk and greek yoghurt.

I assume it’s just the protein brake down or something that makes it easier in my stomach? I’m not celiac (brother is), but do have a wheat intolerance and some other sensitivities.

Ready Brek is carbs with added carbs. Total sugar fest.

There’s no added sugar in Ready Brek, it’s just oats and oat flour (and some fortifying vitamins/minerals).

better off with bacon and eggs for sustained energy and satiety.

Controversial, but porridge being a mix of complex carbs and fiber in a fairly large volume of solid-ish liquid is going to make you feel more full than 2x bacon rashers and 2x eggs.

Both have roughly the same protein content (and if either the bacon or eggs were fried then porridge actually has more protein per calorie)

It’s just swapping half a pint of highly satiating porridge for a few teaspoons of energy dense fats.

The only people who need to worry about completely avoiding any ‘spike’ (however blunt) in blood sugar levels are diabetics.

And you need carbs to burn fat, fat literally needs the byproducts of metabolizing glucose (pyruvate) in order to bind to mitochondria and itself metabolize. If you don’t have carbs available then the body turns to proteins to do the job, at best they might be dietary which means they’re then not subsequently available for anabolism, at worst it starts catabolizing muscle tissue, and it’s a much slower process which is why bonking hurts so much.

@longdog – maybe it’s time I should try pre-steeping the oats overnight again. Been doing some reading and sometimes people will soak in water overnight, drain, and then re-add liquid. I don’t think I’ve tried that middle draining step and maybe it reduces some starch which could be causing my issues.

If not I am happy with home-made ready brek I suppose!

@thisisnotaspoon Ready Brek is is a mix of whole oats and oat flour. So carbs with added carbs and carbs are basically sugar.

How about 6 eggs and 225g of bacon?

@thisisnotaspoon Ready Brek is is a mix of whole oats and oat flour. So carbs with added carbs and carbs are basically sugar.

It’s oats and some oats that have been in a blender. That doesn’t turn it into sugar, that takes amylase enzymes.

How about 6 eggs and 225g of bacon?

Is the goal lethargy? 80g+ of fat and no carbs to burn it?

10g of salt? Your poor kidneys.

Even the ~95g of protein won’t do you much good, the myth of simply more = better was debunked long ago.   Anabolism is triggered when you hit your own MPS threshold which is the point at which the body realizes there’s an excess of ammino acids in the blood stream and it can build some muscle.  The rate of anabolism is dictated largely by training though. So you then just need to repeat that to keep it there throughout the day.  For most people that’s 20-30g in a serving, the rest is either wasted or metabolized.  Eating 90g in one sitting will build more muscle than eating 30g, but eating 3x30g will build more again.

I haven’t eaten Ready Brek for decades, I might get some as a change from my usual Crunchy Nut brekky. I was still eating Farley’s Rusks when I was about 8 or 9, I loved them!

better off with bacon and eggs for sustained energy and satiety.

Not a chance, completely out of the question. See the thread about food you dislike.

30g of oats in a bowl with 150mL almond ‘milk’ left to soak while I feed the hens and put food on the outdoor bird table. Seems OK when I get to eat it

OP, perhaps some Nexium with your breakfast would help? Do you wolf it down? Or ponder over it? Sometimes just guzzling stuff at breakfast can be a problem.

If ready brek or blitzed oats work well for you go with it. The pulpier texture might move on from your stomach through to your gut easier than the lumpier oaty flakes.

@prettygreenparrot – ponderously! Depending on how early I have to get up I am never particularly desperate to eat in the morning. I am sure I am hungry but the act of eating is not really pleasurable for me until gone 10am at least, so it takes me ages!

Just as a side note – it’s kind of amazing how dogmatic people get with their own dietary choices.

I eat over night oats every day but my wife sets oats make her feel light-headed for some reason. It isn’t the dairy because if she has other cereals this doesn’t happen.

As an in between option can you try Quick oats? Might be more digestible. Mornflake used to do great ones.

If it’s the large bowl hitting your stomach, try doing something else?

• Eat the night before?
• Small portions spread over an hour or two?
• flapjacks eaten on the go?
• Rice pudding instead?
• Banana?

Maybe portion size? Less is more sometimes

Ready brek has a high glycemic load value compared to porridge so might be more like an energy rush rather than the sustained energy your looking for.