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Oatly had this strawberry-elderflower sort of drink and then it stopped being made / imported.
It was so fucking good, and I just don't enjoy the other flavours as much.
Oatly adds amylase to convert oat starch into maltose. The result is that the sugar content is about that of Coca-Cola while they still write "unsweetened" or "no added sugar" on their sassy packaging because it's technically true.
It's good for a dash into your coffee, but I wouldn't suggest it as a daily substitute due to the sugar content.
Wouldn't the starch break down into an equivalent amount of sugar during digestion?
Yes. In fact, human saliva contains amylase. Also, coke is way less calory-dense than regular milk.
I keep getting surprised that people seem to think that adding amylase to oat water suddenly adds calories. You merely increase the amount of simple sugars. On the whole, the calory total is stil much lower than regular milk.
Nice strawman you got going there, but I never said anything about calories. It's about sugar.
Your uptake of sugar is not equal across all forms, but varies by the underlying sugar. The rate of uptake is measured with the glycemic index, the higher, the faster the uptake. Lactose has a GI of around 45, sucrose of 65 and maltose of 105. Maltose lets your blood sugar level spike significantly more than the others which leads to a more significant crash which induces hunger, irritability, fatigue, and overeating.
Coke is a lot more sugar-dense than milk (more than double the density) and coupled with the presence of a higher GI sugar, it's more of a snack than a refreshing drink.
Additionally, the controlled enzymatic conversion by adding amylase breaks down a lot more of the oat starch than what would normally happen while eating and digesting, so my point still stands.
I see where you're coming from and I didn't mean to misrepresent your argument.
I am wondering about the following though:
On what basis do you say this? Do you know literature that shows this? Are blood sugar levels clearly impacted differently by oat-water starches with and without amylase treatment?
From the quick googling I did at work, it seems that there are different types of starches that digest at different rates. Whole grain cereals are in the slower-to-digest category *and might not get digested fully.
I personally suspect that the process of making oat milk - blending and straining the oats - makes them easier to digest and probably has an impact on GI. So it's probably a wash.
There is this study about different kinds of processing with alpha-amylase. The relevant data is in Figure 2, control (C in the figure) was just an oat-water slurry that was heated for some time, En is with the addition of amylase. The rest is about exploring different processing techniques.
It doesn't compare starch-sugar ratio during digestion tho, not sure if there are any studies that do that. But higher initial maltose content means a higher spike.
Thanks for the ref.
Based on your ref, I'm not convinced that this is truly the case though. I think this may be more relevant to your point:
https://doi.org/10.1007%2Fbf01092074
I'll read the full article later, but based on the abstract, it doesn't sound promising. Maltose is readily absorbed being a simple sugar while amylose is a multi-sugar (and one of the components of starch) that has to be broken down first in the digestive tract, so I don't think those are comparable.
What you are essentially saying here is that you don't believe sugary drinks will spike your blood sugar level.
Lol no :p I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm saying that you haven't convincingly substantiated your claims.
I was mostly hoping to find direct evidence to support the claim that amylase pre-treated oat-water is more destabilizing to blood sugar levels than non pre-treated. I'm getting the impression that you don't know of any.
That is not to say that your claim is wrong, just that it is, at best, merely supported by indirect evidence.
Edit: typo
There seems to be a confusion here:
Amylose is a polysaccharide and one of the two compounds that form starch (alongside amylopectin). What Oatly adds is amylase, one of the enzymes in our body that breaks down polysaccharides into absorbable sugars which means that their oat milk already contains higher amounts of reduced sugars due to that process which is shown in the study I've linked earlier.
Sorry, fixed the typo