Misinformation Mania: Oat M*lk & the Gluc-Hoax

There you are again. A boring birthday party for some far-removed cousin or family friend. You were not in the mood for conversation anyway, but the sight of your Aunt Dot approaching is troubling. Like many nowadays, Dot, is an amateur investigator . Her preferred source of information? Facebook, Instagram, or the third and most insidious horseman of the post-truth apocalypse: Tiktok. What will it be this week Dot? Vaccines, the moon landing, lizard people?

Before you have a chance to flee , she grabs you. ‘DID YOU KNOW THAT OAT M*LK IS THE WORST THING FOR YOUR HEALTH??? IT’S ESSENTIALLY STARCH COCA COLA SUPER SUGAR POISON JUICE!!!’.

It’s not her fault. As with any new product nibbling at the edges of mainstream, oat m*lk has attracted plenty of noise. Environmental impact, animal welfare, health; everybody has an opinion. The latest obsession? Sugar spikes. A topic captivating pseudoscientists, influencers, and of course my Aunt Dot.

Do you have somebody like Dot in your life? Or perhaps you or a loved one have recently fallen into this oat m*lk conspiracy vat, with no clear way of separating fact from fiction? Hang in there. We will try to shed some light on the matter. But a quick disclaimer: real-life is always nuanced, and when it comes to nutrition, balance is key. So take our insights on sugar, with a pinch of salt.

A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down

The story being circulated is simple. Oat m*lk contains so-called super sugars (sadly, not the type with capes), which supposedly cause enormous spikes in blood sugar. According to self-proclaimed experts, these spikes are one of the worst things that can happen inside your body.

The basic fake-news headline is something like:

Super sugars in oat m*lk cause super sugar spikes and that’s super bad.

Let’s unpack this properly.

On the subject of ‘super sugars’. Oat m*lk does not contain added sugars. Still, the process of making it naturally converts some starches into sugars. How much depends on the recipe and how long the enzymes are active. This conversion process mirrors what happens inside your digestive system, where complex starches are turned into digestible sugars. It’s also the same process used in brewing beer

When making oat m*lk, you are looking for that ‘sweet spot’. Too little conversion, and it tastes like cardboard, too much and it becomes overpoweringly sweet (we’ve all had one of those). The key is finding the perfect balance.

Our supervillain: the Glycemic Index

So what about the sugar spikes? Every story needs a villain. For the oat m*lk saga, the supervillain is called the Glycemic Index, or GI for short. It’s the metric TikTok nutritionists (and my Aunt Dot) love to mention when claiming that oat m*lk will send your blood sugar into the stratosphere.

So what is the Glycemic Index? It essentially measures how quickly a food can raise blood sugar.1 Foods are ranked on a scale from 0 to 100, with pure glucose at the top with a perfect 100. Oat m*lk receives a moderately high score of 59.61,2 between whole grain bread and brown rice. This is where the panic starts. People see ‘59’ and think ‘bad’. End of story.

It is not strange that this spreads so easily. In a complex world, people crave simple answers. We all want silver bullets and one size fits all solutions. It feels good to believe in a black-and-white world of heroes and villains. That is also why bold claims circulate so quickly on Tiktok. Feelings travel faster than facts, but the real hero here is nuance. So let’s dive in.

A major problem with the GI is that it’s a number produced outside of reality, measured under highly artificial conditions that do not reflect real life.

First, GI tests are done on an empty stomach, without any fat, fibre, or protein. It measures how your body could react if you woke up, fasted, and drank oat milk straight out of the carton like some sort of crazed hipster animal. Not in your morning latte, not with breakfast, and not as part of a balanced diet.

Second, the GI measurement is a rough estimation for a category of foods. Different brands, recipes, and techniques produce wildly different results.

Most importantly though, the GI does not take into account how much food you actually consume. Instead, it is based on consuming 50 grams of carbohydrates from a single food source. For rice and bread that is straightforward. For oat m*lk, it is not3.

You would need to drink roughly 700ml of oat m*lk, on an empty stomach, to cause something close to the sugar spike you keep hearing about. I personally really like oat m*lk, and I feel it brings out the best in my coffee, but I also feel like chugging nearly a full carton of it first thing in the morning is a bit excessive.

I can hear you thinking ‘of course the oat m*lk people are trying to defend oat m*lk!’ (wij van WC-eend, as you would say in Dutch). But that is exactly why we want to keep the spotlight where it belongs: on facts and studies over feelings and TikTok soundbites. This is important to us.

I would love to tell you that oat m*lk is the solution to all the world’s problems, but reality is always nuanced. We are not here to sugarcoat the data, but to give it proper context.

Glycemic Load: The Bigger Picture

If you are still reading, thank you for bearing with us.

To recap: yes, oat milk can raise blood sugar. But no, not nearly as much as suggested online. And certainly not in the quantities people consume in normal life.

Any food containing carbohydrates will raise your blood sugar. This is their purpose.

So what are carbohydrates? I won’t bore you too much, but let’s quickly refresh. Carbohydrates are a group of macronutrients made of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. You have met some before, like fructose, lactose, maltose, glucose. There are many more, like Galactose which sounds more like a Star Trek character than a carb.

Before we get lost in the biochemistry of it all, it’s enough to know they are vital sources of energy. Your body breaks them down into glucose, which is then converted into fuel for your cells.

But using the Glycemic Index to understand exactly how much fuel we get is like looking at a poster, and thinking you’ve seen the whole movie.

Instead, it’s time for the bigger picture, which is where the Glycemic Load comes in.

Where the GI measures how fast blood sugar can rise, the Glycemic Load measures how much sugar actually reaches the bloodstream in a normal serving.4 It is a measurement that helps us understand a food’s complete effect on blood sugar.5

The key difference here is that the Glycemic Load actually takes portion size into account, which makes it way more meaningful. The Glycemic Index gives you a speed limit, the Glycemic Load tells you how far you’re driving.

Take watermelon. It has a GI of 80. That’s a truly terrifying number, right? However, a few slices of watermelon will barely provide any carbohydrates, giving it a very low GL of 5. If it’s a significant spike you’re after, you would have to eat more than two kilograms of watermelon in one sitting (on an empty stomach).

Now take ROA. A normal serving of ROA Barista results in a glycemic load of about 10.1, which is considered low.6

So, unless you are chugging buckets of our (some say delicious) oat m*lk on an empty stomach, your morning cappuccino or cheeky iced matcha after lunch won’t cause dramatic sugar spikes. Instead, it will cause a gentle rise in blood sugar.

But Are Sugar Spikes Bad?

‘Fine’, you might think, ‘but even a gentle spike is still bad, right?’

In general, no. A rise in blood sugar is simply your body turning food into fuel, exactly what food is supposed to do.

This is important to note before making any radical and restrictive diet choices. For healthy, non-diabetic individuals, there is no solid (or liquid) evidence that ultra-flat glucose curves improve long-term health outcomes. Too many of the dramatic online claims are built from correlations and assumptions, not demonstrated with a causal effect.7

That is the same type of logic of saying ice cream consumption causes shark attacks simply because both go up in the summer.

What the research does suggest is that for healthy individuals, overall diet quality may be more beneficial than trying to micromanage every single post-meal glucose curve.

So, the next time someone like my Aunt Dot corners you with some TikTok science, you’ll now know what to say.

Yes, oat m*lk contains carbohydrates.
Yes, these can raise blood sugar.
But only slightly, and in a completely normal and healthy way.
Just like food is supposed to do.

The Real Takeaway

Remember that ‘super scary’ slogan from the start of this article?

Super sugars in oat m*lk cause super sugar spikes and that’s super bad.

Let’s revisit that one, with all we’ve learned today:
Super sugars in oat m*lk cause sugar spikes and that’s super bad.

Naturally converted starches in oat m*lk cause gentle increases in blood sugar, exactly as your body intends.

Now, this might not be as flashy or viral a headline, and we won’t be making a TikTok about it anytime soon (mainly because we’re in our 30s and technology scares us), but it is nuanced. And like we said all along, real life rarely offers clear-cut narratives. There are no silver bullets or supercures. Just balance, variety, and nuance.

Stay tuned for more myth-busting, recipes, and painfully boring peer-reviewed academic papers.