Why Whole Grains? Whole grain foods are known to provide superior nutritional value. Unfortunately, it’s often difficult to determine which foods contain substantial amounts of whole grains. As you may have noticed, food marketers play fast and loose with public perceptions. When successful, as they often are, these ploys are a marketer’s dream come true. The measure of their success is most evident on the grocery store cereal, snack cracker, and bread isles. However, that’s just the beginning. In a typical grocery, thousands more processed food products across every department include products that cleverly send deceptive cues about their real identity in an attempt to sell foods that are engineered for taste (addictive as possible) in the guise of quality nutrition. No doubt they hit their sales goals while proportionately undermining the health of the unsuspecting. In the current state of affairs (food regulation and truth in labeling), the consumer must be vigilant in decoding marketing hype and food labels. To reinforce the point, here are some tips that can help you be a smarter shopper for whole grain-based products and especially for products containing whole wheat. • Choose foods that contain whole grains. If the package contains a single ingredient that is a whole grain like oats, oatmeal, rolled oats, steel cut oats, corn, popcorn, brown rice, wild rice, barley, rye, wheat berries, buckwheat, bulgur, quinoa, graham flour, stone ground whole grain, etc. then you have the real thing. • Check for the phrases “100% Whole Grain” or “100% Whole Wheat.” Be especially wary of bread, cereals, tortillas, and pastas that sport any other designations on the package. • Be aware that foods with the following words or phrases on the label could be whole grain products but usually aren’t unless there is additional qualifying information. Made with whole grains Made with whole wheat Made with natural grains Contains whole grain 100% wheat Multi-grain 7 grains Cracked wheat Wheat flour Bran Wheat germ Semolina Durum wheat Enriched flour Degerminated • Be aware that color can be misleading. Often bread, crackers, rice, and tortillas are given a darker color to suggest that they are more natural or more nutritious. Again, reading the label carefully will reveal the truth. Keep in mind that some lighter color foods may actually be 100% whole grain foods. Again, it’s all about reading the label. If the first ingredient in the list of ingredients is “whole” (whole wheat flour, whole oats, etc.), it is possibly but not guaranteed to be predominantly whole grain. For example, if there are 20 ingredients, then the first ingredient might be only 5% of the product. That leaves the possibility of the other 19 ingredients to not be whole grains. If there are two grain ingredients and only the second ingredient is a whole grain, the product might contain as little as perhaps 5% or as much as 49% whole grains. Smart shopping for nutritious foods in a world of creative food marketing ploys is not a cake walk. When there are multiple grains, determining nutritional value gets more complex. For example, if a bread is 30% refined flour and 70% whole grain with the whole grains split between different grains you have right to become suspicious. Suppose the label tells us the ingredients include enriched white flour, whole wheat, whole oat flour, whole cornmeal, whole millet along with a dozen other miscellaneous ingredients. As a consumer, you would not know whether the whole grains make 90% of the product or perhaps only 5% of the product. We can only hope that better labeling is on the way. Feeling like a smarter shopper now? Before heading for the grocery aisles check yourself with a short five-question quiz. In the five- question quiz below, see if you can guess which products contain whole grains? The answers are at the end of the article. A. Bread Ingredients: Wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin, Iron, Riboflavin, Folic Acid B. Tortilla Ingredients: Whole Wheat Flour, Soybean Oil, Salt, Corn, Starch, Wheat Starch C. Dry Cereal Ingredients: Whole Corn Meal, Whole Grain Oats, Corn Starch, Canola Oil, Cinnamon, Brown Sugar D. Cracker Ingredients: Whole Grain Brown Rice Flour, Sesame Seeds, Potato Starch, Safflower Oil, Quinoa Seeds, Flax Seeds, Salt E. Roll Ingredients: Unbleached Enriched Wheat Flour, Sugar, Salt, Soybean Oil, Oat Bran, Yellow Corn Meal, Salt, Barley, Rye An especially important nutrient in whole grains is fiber. Just be aware that fiber content alone is not a reliable way of determining if a product is a whole grain product. Also be aware that fiber content varies with the type of grain. Rice may be only 3.5% fiber. For wheat, 6% fiber is typical. In contrast, barley and bulgur can be upwards of 15% or more fiber. For a rundown on the fiber contents of the most common grains, the Oldways Whole Grain Council provides a handy list. To complicate matters, a product could have its natural-fiber replaced with lower quality fiber products. Sawdust would qualify as fiber although not recommended. Well, you get the idea. While the designation “whole grains” tell part of the story, being alert to clever marketing ploys never goes out of style. Nancy Neighbors, MD Huntsville, Alabama More About Wheat Flour? Despite being one of the most ubiquitous food sources, unless raised on a farm you may have never seen wheatberries – the source of wheat flour. For most, our experience with wheat is as a finely ground flour used to make bread, crackers, cakes, muffins, biscuits, etc. Unfortunately, creating these gastronomical delights usually requires using a flour made from only the starch part of the wheatberry (endosperm) with the germ (an amazing source of micronutrients), and the bran (an excellent source of fiber) discarded. In recent years, the practice of using only the starchy part of the wheat berry has been fingered as a culprit in America's obesity epidemic As a result, smart consumers now look for wheat based products made from whole wheatberries that are typically labeled as “whole wheat.” Although whole wheat products are certainly better than their pale white counterparts, they can have one major shortcoming when measured against eating the simple whole intact wheatberry. Whenever a grain is ground into flour, the glycemic index increases significantly. As a result, foods made from refined flours can spike blood sugar and as a consequence make weight control very difficult. The inevitable consequence is a cycle of feeling hungry sooner, eating and repeating. It’s far better to eat foods that digest more slowly. Repeatedly revving your car to the redline will in time destroy the engine. Repeatedly spiking your blood sugar has a predictably similar effect on the pancreases and eventually on every organ in the body. Fortunately, there is a way to save our beloved baked goods from total disgrace. Wheat can also be milled in a way that leaves fragments of the whole grain intact. This makes a big difference in how your body metabolizes the grains. While it’s always better to opt for whole intact grains, any flour that has the whole grain is better than white flour for putting the brakes on the rise and fall in blood sugar. Best remember that when it comes to processing foods, less is more. When shopping for bread, muffins and similar products the best choices will contain chunks of intact grains like bits of oats, wheat berries, rye or millet. Sprouted grains offer several nutritional benefits. During the sprouting process, grains increases some nutrients, including B vitamins, vitamin C, folate, fiber, and lysine an essential amino acid. To those with grain sensitivities, sprouted grains may also be less allergenic. However, there is art to sprouting and practice is required to do it well. Let the sprouts sit in water too long and they can mildew or grow into indigestible grass. As a reminder about choosing wisely, remember that foods made from flours tend to be calorie dense foods that should be consumed in small quantities unless you have a very active lifestyle. Do you walk 10,000 steps a day? Do your daily activities involve physical work? If not the active type, you may find a diet of whole food plant-based foods your best line of defense against an expanding waistline. Often I’m asked, “Is a whole food plant-based diet the one to choose?” While not essential for everyone, it is a healthful diet from several perspectives. As a lifestyle diet, it helps limit calories, ensures an abundance of micronutrients and contributes to a healthy vascular system and biome that can aid in warding off dozens of chronic diseases that afflict over 50% of the population. While there are alternatives to a whole food plant-based diet, most require greater willpower and lead to situations that are counterproductive to maintaining optimum health. Deviating from a whole food plant-based diet makes the pursuit of health a slippery slope. A few can do it. Most will fall down. “Health may not be everything, but without health everything is nothing." - Dr. Hans Diehl Answers to Quiz B, C and D are predominantly whole grain foods because they include ‘whole’ grains as the primary ingredient. |