Swap Oats for a Buckwheat Breakfast
Article by Stefan Burns - Updated October 2022. Join the Wild Free Organic email newsletter!
Millions of people around the world start their morning with an oatmeal breakfast, either from steel cut, rolled, or instant oats. Oatmeal is delicious, fiber dense, and convenient. Buckwheat may be better for many people than oats, especially those who need be more mindful of their gut health, and it’s buckwheat!
Containing different micronutrients than oatmeal overall, buckwheat is a great breakfast for those looking to distance themselves from wheat production and glyphosate usage or simply for those who want a second hot creamy breakfast porridge option with a different micronutrient profile. It’s fiber dense but not as hard on the intestinal lining at oats or wheat, and it takes other foods easily like bananas, almond butter, nuts, dried or fresh fruit very well, making a vegan nutritious delicious meal.
What is Buckwheat?
Buckwheat is not a type of wheat. In fact it’s not even a cereal grain. Buckwheat is a type of flowering plant whose seeds resemble grains, and is referred to as a psuedocereal (like chia seeds and quinoa). It is rare for flowering plants to have strong defense mechanisms, instead working with animals and insects symbiotically to reproduce.
Grasses (like wheat) aren’t as cosmopolitan, and grasses have evolved serious defense mechanisms throughout time. The leaf blades of many grasses are hardened with silica (glass) phytoliths (crystals), which discourage grazing animals. The parts we actually eat, cereal grains, are pleasantly referred to as spikelets, and then you have fibrous chaff surrounding the grain. Next is a hard protective bran shell, and then finally the germ and endosperm, which are the parts of the grain containing the most desirable and evolved nutrients.
Field of buckwheat. Not a grass, but a flower!
Digesting Wheat and Oats is Paleo Difficult
Grasses are so hard to digest that the holy grass chomping animal, the cow, has four stomachs just to digest them. The first three stomachs of a cow help break down the fibrous plant material, and the last stomach more closely resembles ours. Even then, cows are known for their prodigious flatulence, a byproduct of the process. Humans don’t have four stomachs, and even with the advanced processing we use to strip wheat grains from chaff, we evolutionarily aren’t predisposed to being able to digest wheat and other grains like oats well.
Add in many pesticide applications during cultivation, harvest, and storage as is done with non-organically grown whole grains like wheat and oats, gut health and wellness suffer. Toxins like glyphosate (the main herbicide found in Roundup) disrupt the shikimate pathway and has an antimicrobial effect on the microbiome. Pesticides also erode the mucus lining of the digestive system and degrade epithelial cellular junctions underneath. These three factors together cause stress to the digestive system. When tested non-gmo crops were found to have glyphosate residues at 0.07 mg/kg to 0.09 mg/kg. For a GMO crop, the range was found to be between 3.3 and 5.7 mg/kg (1).
Those with sensitive or compromised digestive systems will experience bloating, indigestion, volatile digestive motility, and loose stool from consumption of whole grains sprayed heavily with pesticides. Some people can handle it for a time.
The reason many people experience digestive upset from non-organic cereal grains is because the body eliminates them from the digestive track in order to avoid absorbing toxic pesticides into the body, which then cause stress on other organs such as the liver, kidneys, spleen, etc.
The goal of eating is to extract as much goodness from food as easily as possible, and any food which the body can’t or refuses to process efficiently should be eliminated from the diet and can reintroduced again at a later time for testing.
Buckwheat is Easy to Digest
Unlike oats or wheat, buckwheat is relatively easy to digest. This is due to the fact that buckwheat comes from an angiosperm plant and not a grain. Buckwheat shares many of the same culinary traits as oats though. Buckwheat cooks similarly, has similar taste and texture, and has a nearly identical macronutrient profile. Buckwheat also has the advantage of often being gluten free as it’s processed on separate machinery free of wheat residues.
Cooked Buckwheat (left) vs Cooked Oats (right)
Oats, even organic oats, unless specifically stated “gluten-free” contain residual gluten and wheat proteins from having been processed on the same machinery as wheat. To anyone with a gluten intolerance, Crohn’s disease, and celiac disease, this “hidden” source of gluten can wreak havoc.
Buckwheat will have lower levels of trace gluten from processing, but is still sprayed with glyphosate as are most crops in the USA, though not as much. Only non-gmo organic buckwheat will have very low to zero glyphosate contamination, and this what I recommend you find if you love having a breakfast cereal in the morning.
Buckwheat Macronutrients (100g)
Calories: 343 calories
Fat: 3.4 grams
Carbohydrates: 71.5 grams
Fiber: 10 grams
Protein: 13.3 grams
Oats Macronutrients (100g)
Calories: 379 calories
Fat: 6.5 grams
Carbohydrates: 67.7 grams
Fiber: 10.1 grams
Protein: 13.2 grams
For all their differences evolutionary and processing wise, buckwheat and oats have similar macronutrient ratios as seen above. Both buckwheat and oats are a good option when a high carbohydrate meal is desired.
When it comes to micronutrients, buckwheat and oats are similar but overall I think buckwheat is the better option for reasons I’ll explain. For 100 grams of oats vs 100 grams of buckwheat see the nutritional differences below:
|
Vitamins |
Buckwheat | Oats | Greater Than By |
|
Thiamin (mg) |
0.1 | 0.46 | 360% |
|
Riboflavin (mg) |
0.43 | 0.16 | 168% |
|
Niacin (mg) |
7.02 | 1.13 | 521% |
|
Vitamin B6 (mg) |
0.21 | 0.1 | 110% |
|
Folate (mcg) |
30 | 32 | 6.6% |
|
Vitamin B12 (mcg) |
0 | 0 | -- |
|
Pantothenic Acid (mg) |
1.23 | -- | -- |
|
Vitamin A (IU) |
0 | 0 | -- |
|
Vitamin C (mg) |
0 | 0 | -- |
|
Vitamin D (IU) |
0 | 0 | -- |
|
Vitamin E (mg) |
-- | 0.42 | -- |
|
Vitamin K (mcg) |
-- | 2.0 | -- |
|
Minerals |
|||
|
Calcium (mg) |
18 | 52 | 189% |
|
Iron (mg) |
2.2 | 4.25 | 93% |
| Magnesium (mg) | 231 | 138 | 67% |
|
Phosphorus (mg) |
347 | 410 | 18% |
|
Potassium (mg) |
460 | 362 | 27% |
|
Sodium (mg) |
1.0 | 6.0 | 500% |
|
Zinc (mg) |
2.4 | 3.64 | 51% |
|
Copper (mg) |
1.1 | -- | -- |
|
Manganese (mg) |
1.3 | -- | -- |
|
Selenium (mcg) |
8.3 | -- | -- |
Macronutrient and Micronutrient data pulled from the USDA database.
Oats have more micronutrients which have greater values than buckwheat (7 vs 5), but buckwheat has higher levels of the micronutrients more commonly deficient in the diet. Buckwheat also contains much higher percentage levels of those certain micronutrients, so they come out ahead.
Buckwheat contains 67% more magnesium, magnesium being second most common micronutrient deficiency and vital for hormone health, skin, sleep, and bone strength. Buckwheat also has 27% more potassium, which helps to balance sodium/potassium ratios in the body which is important for the heart, brain, digestion, and nervous system.
Oats do have significantly more calcium, iron, phosphorus, and zinc than buckwheat. Buckwheat contains significantly more of the B vitamins riboflavin, niacin, and vitamin B6, only containing significantly less thiamin than oats does. Nutritional yeast is the highest source of thiamin, unfortified unlike artificially fortified grains, and completely vegan.
Try Buckwheat for Breakfast for One Week
Watch your Gut Health Get Better
Next time you reach to buy a bag of oats at the grocery story, reach for a bag of buckwheat instead!
Try it out and see if you like buckwheat’s flavor and texture, and pay attention to your energy levels and state of digestion after eating it. Worst case you don’t notice any positives eating buckwheat over oats, and best case you improve your digestion and get more of the critical micronutrients such as magnesium that are missing from most modern day diets. In my experience buckwheat has never made my digestion worse, and it’s good to have reliable food like that on hand.
Buckwheat could very well be your perfect food (2). If you are of Eastern European ancestry that is more likely to be the case as a lot of buckwheat has been grown in those areas historically.
Try out some organic hulled buckwheat groats and explore a whole new world!
Together the digestive system and microbiome are the foundation of health from which everything else is dependent on.
The Holistic Gut Health Guide contains all the information you need to identify and understand the gastrointestinal and microbiome problems you may have while also providing you the most effective natural methods you can use to heal your gut. No gut health problems are unsolvable, give yourself every possible advantage along your gut health journey by reading an implementing the advice shared in the Holistic Gut Health Guide.
Some of the information in the Holistic Gut Health Guide isn’t common knowledge but when implemented it is highly effective in healing the gut and shifting the microbiome towards symbiosis. In 88 pages you’ll be provided each and every possible advantage you can have on your gut health journey that I have discovered.
References:
Glyphosate-tested. Healthy Traditions.
Wijngaard HH, Arendt EK. Buckwheat. Cereal Chemistry Journal. 2006;83(4):391-401.
Medical Disclaimer: All information, content, and material of this website is for informational purposes only and is not intended to serve as a substitute for the consultation, diagnosis, and/or medical treatment of a qualified physician or healthcare provider.
Disclosure: Wild Free Organic is a member of various affiliate programs and if a purchase is made through one of our affiliate links a small commission is received. This does not affect your purchase price. Visit our disclosure page for more information.
Other Articles on Nutrition
Fasting is the process of abstaining from all food, and by activating different aspects of human biology, fasting is an incredible healing tool that can be used to reduce inflammation throughout the body, lose weight, heal the gut, reset the microbiome, improve the immune system, and much more. Get started on the first foot with this beginners guide to fasting.