Rolled oats are used in America in human nutrition principally as a breakfast food. Oats have long been a principal food grain in Scotland. The oat kernel is comparable with wheat or maize in its dietary properties in nearly all respects. It appears from the data available that there is distinctly less fat-soluble A in rolled oats than in wheat and certainly much less than in yellow maize. There is no demonstrable amount of anti-scorbutic substance in the oat kernel.

Oats have been a great favorite among feeders of horses, and are believed by many to have exceptionally high nutritive value because animals fed liberally with oats frequently show much spirit when driven or ridden. In the experience of McCollum and Simmonds, rats which are fed on restricted diets of certain types, faulty in one or more respects, become restless, irritable and apprehensive, and the thought occurs that perhaps the common expression among horsemen that an animal "feels his oats" may have been misinterpreted. The tendency of horses fed liberally on this grain to exert themselves greatly without urging may be the result of increased irritability and apprehensiveness.