Oat bran: it's b-a-a-a-ck.

"Why is this man smiling?" asked the full-page ad in the New York Times last January.

The satisfied grin on that familiar face was Quaker's way of saying thanks to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). At Quaker's prompting, the FDA had proposed a rule that--for the first time--would allow food labels to make a health claim not about fat, fiber, or other nutrients, but about a single food. "Diets high in oats may reduce the risk of heart disease" is what you'll see on the front label of many foods if the FDA makes its proposal final. But the truth about oats is far more complicated.

WHAT OATS CAN'T DO

Can diets high in oats lower cholesterol? Yes, but there's a catch... several catches, actually. Here are a few that the FDA glossed over:

* To lower cholesterol, you have to eat a lot of oats...every day.

Many people who hear that "diets high in oats lower cholesterol" might assume that eating oatmeal occasionally, or even a few times a week, makes a difference. Forget it.

The FDA concluded that to lower cholesterol by five percent, you'd have to eat three grams of beta-glucan--the soluble fiber in oats--every day.

That works out to one cup of cooked hot oat bran cereal, which is a typical serving. But because oatmeal has less beta-glucan than oat bran, you'd have to eat 1 1/2 cups of cooked oatmeal to get the same amount of beta-glucan.

That's 50 percent more than a typical serving. It's what you'd get by eating three packets of instant oatmeal.

"You'd have to consume so much oatmeal that it would be unrealistic to expect people to eat enough to make an impact," says heart disease researcher Frank Sacks of Harvard Medical School.

Indeed, in one study, researchers couldn't get people to eat the equivalent of I 1/2 cups of cooked oatmeal a day for just 12 weeks. And the participants were all given recipes for oats and worked at a company that served oatmeal cereals and muffins daily in its cafeteria.(1)

"In some individuals, oat bran might lower cholesterol another few percentage points beyond what they would get by restricting saturated fat and cholesterol," says Basil Rifkind of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. "But only if it's eaten regularly."

And that's not easy. "People might get tired of eating oat bran I every day like a medicine," says William Connor, a heart disease expert at the Oregon Health Sciences Center in Portland.

* The labels on many foods won't say that you'd have to eat three servings a day to lower your cholesterol.

Three grams of beta-glucan a day will make a dent in your cholesterol, says the FDA. But it plans to allow foods with just one gram per serving to make a heart disease claim. Why?

When Quaker asked the FDA to allow claims for oats, it envisioned an oat-filled future. In one eating plan, a day's menu included hot oatmeal for breakfast, oatmeal bread for lunch, oatmeal cookies for an afternoon snack, and oat-wheat crackers after dinner.

Pretty funny...but not to the FDA. "The agency is persuaded by [Quaker's] argument that oat products can reasonably be expected to be consumed three times a day," it declared. (Good thing Quaker didn't try to persuade the FDA to buy the Brooklyn Bridge.)

Worse yet, the labels on products with just one gram of beta-glucan per serving--foods like instant oatmeal or Quaker Honey Nut Toasted Oatmeal or Cinnamon Life--would never actually tell people that they'd have to eat three servings a day, every day, to lower their cholesterol. "People might make the mistake of thinking: 'I can have a packet of oatmeal a day and then go out and have a burger,"' says Sacks.

* Oats lower cholesterol very little unless you start out with high cholesterol.

In almost all studies--most have been funded by Quaker--one cup of oat bran or 1 1/2 cups of oatmeal lowered cholesterol meaningfully only when it was fed to people who had high cholesterol when the studies began.(2,3) (The one exception was a study that didn't keep track of the participants' diets and reported such an unusually steep drop in cholesterol that it's difficult to believe.((4))

"Large amounts of oat bran lower cholesterol modestly in people with cholesterol levels above 240," says Sacks, "but less in people with lower levels."

Granted, it's people with high levels who are likely to be interested in Quaker's claims. And oats wouldn't hurt people with lower cholesterol levels. But seeing the claims may convince them to eat oats far more often than they might otherwise, for no good reason.

* Oats could squeeze other good foods out of the diet.

Quaker might be happy to have people eating oats three times a day. But is it wise to give up whole wheat bread for oatmeal bread, or wheat bran cereal for oat bran cereal? Dozens of studies suggest that the insoluble fiber in wheat bran helps cut the risk of constipation and possibly colon cancer.

"It irks me that the FDA is saying that it's reasonable to eat oat cereals and breads three times a day," says D. Mark Hegsted, professor emeritus of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. "That squeezes out competing breads and cereals without sufficient reason."

* Unhealthy foods would ride on Quaker's coattails.

Anyone who remembers the "oat bran craze" of the 1980s can rattle them off: oat bran potato chips, oat bran doughnuts, oat bran beer. For a food--any food--to sell like hotcakes, all it needed was a sprinkling of oat bran.

The FDA's proposal would prohibit heart disease claims on foods that have too little oats or too much fat, salt, or cholesterol. But those foods would still fly off the shelves.

Once that smiling silver-haired guy convinces consumers that oats are good for the heart, "the word `oat bran' on a product will mean `healthy,' even when other ingredients make the food undesirable," says Connor.

MAGIC RESULTS

It's not just oats that are at stake here. If the FDA approves the first health claim for a single food, you can bet there will be more--many backed by even less evidence than are oats.

"Sooner or later, the FDA will be asked to approve claims for soy protein, fish oils, antioxidants, and more," says Hegsted. "By the time two or three dozen foods have those claims, no one's going to know how to choose a good diet. It's foolish."

Ironically, Quaker can already claim that oats can help prevent heart disease... as part of a broader claim for foods that contain soluble fiber (see "Fiber for the Heart").

"Diets low in saturated fat and cholesterol and rich in fruits, vegetables, and grains that contain fiber can reduce the risk of heart disease." That's what labels on oatmeal and oat bran say today.

But oatmeal sales have never matched the heights they hit during the oat bran craze. So Quaker went back to a strategy that turns single foods into items that can make or break a healthy diet.

"The idea that this food has magical qualities," says Daniel Steinberg, a heart disease researcher at the University of California--San Diego, "that's what you want to avoid."

RELATED ARTICLE: THE BOTTOM LINE:

* If you have high cholesterol, eating three grams of soluble fiber a day seems to lower it by about five percent. The soluble fiber in oats is called beta-glucan.

* To get three grams of beta-glucan from oats, you'd have to eat one cup of cooked oat bran cereal, 1 1/2 cups of cooked oatmeal, or three packets of instant oatmeal.

* The best way to lower your cholesterol is to cut back on saturated fat and cholesterol. Eating five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables a day should lower it further...and may cut your risk of cancer as well.

RELATED ARTICLE: Fiber for the Heart

Many foods haven't been analyzed for soluble fiber (most canned beans and baked potatoes without the skin, for example). Here are some Bood sources.

Food Soluble Fiber (8)

Beans & Vegetables (1/2 cup, cooked,unless noted) Artichokes 2.4 Potato, baked, with skin (1) 1.2 Kidney beans, canned 1.0 Beets, bokchoy, parsnips, or canned pumpkin 0.6 Sweet potato, baked, without skin (1) 0.6 Potato, boiled, without skin (1) 0.4

Fruits Prunes (5) 1.4 Orange, Florida (1) 0.9 Pear (1) or tangerines (2) 0.7 Banana (1) or nectarine (1) 0.6 Kiwifruit (2) or strawberries (1 cup) 0.6 Orange, navel (1) 0.5

Cereals (fiber numbers have been rounded) Kellogg's Bran Buds (1/3 cup) 3.0 Quaker Oat Bran Hot Cereal (1 cup, cooked) 3.0 Quaker Quick Oats (1 cup, cooked) 2.0 Cheerios (1 cup) or Kellogg's All-Bran (1/2 cup) 1.0 Nabisco 100% Bran cup) 1.0 Post Raisin Bran (1 cup) 1.0 Quaker Instant Oatmeal (1 packet) 1.0 Quaker 100% Natural Low Fat Granola (1/2 cup) 1.0

Other Foods Gardenburger (1) 1.3 Spaghetti (1 cup, cooked) 0.6 Macaroni (1 cup, cooked) 0.4

Sources: J. of Food Comp. and Analysis 6: 203, 1993;J. of the Amer. Dietetic Assoc. 92: 175, 1992; and manufacturers.

(1) J. of the American Dietetic Assoc. 86: 759, 1986. (2) American Journal of Public Health 81: 183, 1991. 3 J. of the (3) American Medical Assoc. 265: 1833, 1991. 4 Western (4) Journal of Medicine 148: 299, 1988.