Why everyone’s talking about... Overnight OATS

Confused by modern trends? Let our irreverent new briefing explain everything...

Overnight oats? Sounds like what you’d stuff in a horse’s nosebag...

Well you could, but it’s the trendy breakfast championed by A-listers such as Cameron Diaz, Gwyneth Paltrow, Victoria Beckham… and Mishal Husain from Radio 4’s Today programme, who always brings some into the studio. Adventurer Ben Fogle says he ‘marched to the South Pole’ on them.

So fashionably expensive, then?

Actually, no. All you need do is mix 250ml of milk with 125g of rolled oats and leave it in the fridge overnight. In the morning, add four tablespoons of plain yogurt, fruit and nuts, plus chia seeds or grated chocolate if you fancy.

Sounds like a lot of soaking.

Yes. But chef Yotam Ottolenghi reckons ten minutes is sufficient. Even if that doesn’t suggest the same sort of dedication as the on-trend overnight process.

Isn’t this just fancy muesli?

No, no, no. Or, in other words, yes. But don’t tell the celebs.

So it’s good to be a ‘muesli-muncher’?

Yes, even though it’s a mocking term. Boris

Johnson once ridiculed Jeremy Corbyn as ‘a muesli-munching sandal-wearer’.

Do you have some fun facts about muesli?

I thought you’d never ask. A 19th Century Swiss doctor is credited with ‘inventing’ it. Maximilian Bircher-Benner made it for patients at his Zurich sanatorium as a way to get them to eat more raw fruit. He believed a diet of raw apples had cured him of jaundice. Although primarily you need iron – of which there’s not much in apples – or, you know, medicine.

Although we think of muesli only as a breakfast food, it was originally intended as an appetiser similar to bread and butter. The Swiss still eat it at all hours, and because it can be eaten anytime, anywhere, food writer Diccon Bewes called it the ‘Martini of food’.

So James Bond will order it in the next movie?

No, but he will probably get his oats.

What else has Switzerland contributed to world cuisine?

Fondue and Toblerone, the chocolate bar you can also use as a ‘next customer please’ divider at the supermarket.

I think we’ve got away from overnight oats. Are the health benefits proven?

Wholegrain oats are good for health. They can help prevent diabetes and reduce cholesterol. That said, Dr Bircher-Benner died at 72, not living to see his life’s dream, a ‘people’s sanatorium for a lifestyle based on nature’. Nor the launch of Ms Paltrow’s Goop brand. Small mercies.