THE HAUTE OAT : Once a mainstay of the All-American breakfast, this plain grain has become the latest darling of health-conscious consumers, thanks to studies inidcating that it may reduce cholesterol.

The brief news item buried deep in the Philadelphia Inquirer’s food section carried the headline, “Study Finds Muffins Helped Cut Cholesterol.” “Within 48 hours, we received several letters and a phone inquiry asking for the recipe for these magic muffins,” food writer Marilynn Marler reported later when explaining how to make oat and oat-bran muffins.

The study, originally described in the March issue of the Western Journal of Medicine, was carried out by medical student Kurt V. Gold and Dr. Dennis M. Davidson at the University of California at Irvine. It added further evidence to research going back 25 years showing the cholesterol-reducing properties of the dietary fiber found in oats and oat bran, the grain’s outer coating.

Consumers now are responding to the findings--perhaps as a side effect of the so-called oatmeal war that broke out last year after General Mills launched Total Oatmeal, backed by a $12-million promotional campaign, as a challenge to Quaker Oats’ pre-eminence in the nation’s $500-million hot-cereal market. Quaker Oats retaliated massively by introducing a new vitamin-fortified product of its own and doubling its marketing budget to $60 million.

For whatever reason, the long-prosaic oat--a traditional grain of choice for dairy farmers, horse fanciers and grandmothers--appears to be enjoying a new level of respect. The lowly oat is becoming haute --the latest grain to enjoy a run on the nutritionists’ bran-wagon.

For example, General Foods’ Orowheat bakery is introducing Oatnut bread in the huge and hotly competitive Southern California market this month after successfully testing the soft-textured loaves laced with hazelnuts in Seattle and Portland, Ore., supermarkets. Oatnut becomes Orowheat’s second oat bread.

“We keep an eye on the cereal market, and we’re seeing a resurgence of interest in oats in the bread market and the cereal market as well,” explained William D. Grove, general manager of Orowheat’s Southern California operation in Montebello. “I visit grocery stores quite a bit, and there is definitely an increased awareness of oats and oat bran.”

Whether this increased awareness constitutes a new consumer trend is at this point open to question, however.

“ Any thing having to do with fiber continues to have a vogue,” acknowledged Lisbeth Echeandia, publisher of Confectioner magazine, a snacks trade journal. “But I’m not sure whether it’s a fad or a trend. It’s sort of like the granola-bar business--unless it tastes good, people aren’t going to keep buying it.”

But Grove, for one, sees growth ahead for the grain after years of flat-to-falling human consumption patterns. “Oats are moving more into the mainstream,” the baker insisted. “Actually, we see the mainstream as changing, and we’re moving with it.”

That view was seconded by Karen Brown, representing the Food Marketing Institute, whose members include major supermarket retailers. “Oats have always been in the mainstream,” Brown said, “but there is more use of oat bran now, and more interest in oat-bran muffins, and a resurgence in natural oats products.

“This is no longer the dusty corner of the health-food section, but the main aisles of the store.”

If so, that would mark a notable comeback for a grain that had become the breakfast of champion race horses and pleasure ponies, but otherwise had taken its commercial lumps. Until General Mills threw down the oatmeal gauntlet, Quaker Oats had more or less let its century-old mush pretty well sell itself--which it pretty well did, to the point of giving the Chicago-based company about two-thirds of all hot-cereal sales.

That marketing lethargy, plus more recent interest in grains by consumers, is what drew General Mills to return to its roots with Total Oatmeal as a companion to its first and best-selling cold cereal, Cheerios (originally, Cheeryoats).

Heavy promotions launched Total Oatmeal “extremely well,” said General Mills spokesman William Shaffer. Quaker Oats Oatmeal enjoyed more than a 10% sales increase last winter, the traditional oatmeal season, said its spokesman, Ron Bottrell.

“In a mature category like hot cereal, a double-digit increase is really something,” Bottrell said. “Never have Americans eaten as much oatmeal as they have this hot-cereal season.

“The level of awareness was really heightened this year because there was more oatmeal advertising than there ever had been before,” he speculated, “and the messages were new.”

The messages were strong on the nutritional value and health benefits of oats and oat bran. Indeed, they were so strong that the Food and Drug Administration, which is expected to issue final regulations this summer that will set tests for food advertising claims, received numerous complaints of exaggeration. The most vocal came from the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington consumer advocacy group that has previously taken strong opposition to alcoholic beverage ads.

Contrast to History

The center contended that Quaker Oats ads overstated the cereal’s actual role in reducing cholesterol by claiming that participants in an experiment who ate oatmeal as part of a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet had experienced a reduction of “on average almost 10%.” The center pointed out that the oat cereal accounted for about one-third of the total average reduction; the rest of the low-fat diet contributed the balance. The center did not dispute the cholesterol-reducing qualities of oats and oat bran, however, and Bottrell of Quaker Oats dismissed the complaint, saying the center had only “presumed what readers might infer from reading the text.” Quaker Oats’ own marketing research found otherwise, he said.

All this attention to oats contrasts to the grain’s forlorn history of the past 30 years, according to Linwood A. Hoffman, an agricultural economist and oat specialist with the Agriculture Department.

Oats were a mainstay of American life from Colonial days until the 1950s, Hoffman said. Production peaked in 1955, when oats ranked third in crop value among all grains before beginning a prolonged slump to 16th place today. From producing 35% of the world’s oats in the early 1950s, U.S. farmers now contribute barely 16%, a drop from 1.5 billion bushels in 1955 to just 400 million.

Moreover, Hoffman said, the United States actually began to import oats for the first time in 1982, when purchase of foreign oats leaped from 3.9 million bushels to 30 million bushels, partly because of big surplus crops abroad as well as an overvalued dollar and cheap cargo rates on otherwise empty freighters returning to the United States from Europe. This year 35 million bushels are expected to be imported, he said, a shortage ironically encouraged by federal subsidies that, until last December, made barley a more profitable choice of crop for many former oat growers.

High in Soluble Fiber

Meanwhile, research into the nutritional value of whole grains in the human diet has led to increased consumer interest in what used to be called “roughage”--dietary fiber. The latest studies at UC Irvine, Northwestern University and other institutions have reinforced earlier findings that soluble fiber, a digestible form of roughage, reduces blood cholesterol levels, though just how remains to be determined. Insoluble fiber, contained in all whole grains, passes through the digestive tract intact, cleaning the colon, aiding elimination and reducing the risk of colon cancer--a fact that President Reagan’s surgeries have helped popularize.

As it happens, though, oat bran turns out to be one of the best known natural sources of soluble fiber. (Others include beans, brussels sprouts, carrots, zucchini and rolled oats--as in oatmeal; nearly as good are grapefruit, pears, prunes, apples, apricots, figs, oranges, broccoli, eggplant and potatoes.)

And it is that distinctive quality of oats that has created the upsurge in consumer interest manifested by the proliferation of new oat products. If General Mills, Quaker Oats and Kelloggs (offering a new single-serving Fiber Pack, which includes “Cracklin’ Oat Bran”) have introduced new products, along with Orowheat’s new bread, Health Valley Foods in Montebello counts at least half a dozen oat products among the 32 cereals and cereal products that it makes and distributes nationally.

Health Valley produces three versions of Oat Bran Flakes (Original, With Raisins and With Almonds and Dates)--not to mention Oat Bran O’s (a loop-shaped cereal that also comes in a fruit-and-nut version), Oat Bran Graham Crackers and Oat Bran Fruit Jumbos (a cookie).

The company’s products, which contain no salt or sugar (they are sweetened with fruit juice), are carried by many supermarkets nationally, according to Harry Urist, director of packaging, but they are most readily found in health-food outlets.

Supermarkets Interested

As it happens, these former boutiques are themselves becoming larger and carrying a broader range of foods. For example, 11-year-old Mrs. Gooch’s Natural Food Store now operates six markets in the Los Angeles area--including a spacious new “one-stop” store in Beverly Hills. Mrs. Gooch’s has stocked oat bran in bulk since it opened its first store in West Los Angeles in January, 1977, but the Sherman Oaks company now also stocks oat-bran cookies, muffins, cereals, baking mixes and packaged oat bran as well, said Chris Kysar, assistant purchasing director.

The success of Mrs. Gooch’s may explain the increasing attention that major supermarket chains are paying to such growing consumer demand for “nutrition dense” foods, fresh fruits and vegetables and lean meats. While California supermarkets have traditionally led the nation in the number of “health-food” items they carried, said Steven Koff, president of the Southern California Grocers Assn., “that trend has gone nationwide.”

“Americans in general are more concerned about health,” Koff said. “Most people are very concerned now about what they’re eating.”