It's very important that you ask yourself the question "What are whole grains" as most people are rather
confused about the definition of the word.
Many buy brown bread thinking that they're making a smart choice, but it's not always the case. Brown bread
is often made with a mixture of wholemeal and white flour or even with just white flour colored with
molasses.
The same with brown rice; often it's just white rice with a bit of coloring, not the
real thing.
Whole grain foods are made with the intact kernels of cereals, such as wheat, rice, oat, barley, buckwheat, etc.
Whole grains contain all three parts of the grain - the nutrient-rich germ, the energy-providing
endosperm and the fiber-rich bran layer.
Most cereal foods are made with refined or
crushed, processed kernels.
It's true that to make bread and pasta from whole grains you need a degree of processing otherwise you couldn't make either of those products.
But the processing must be kept to a minimum to preserve as much of the original nutrients as
possible.
Whole
grains are what our ancestors ate before modern food processing began
pulverizing kernels into superfine powder to make white bread, as it was
perceived as being more desirable and healthier, as well as having an
increased shelf life.
Little did they know that they were paying more
money for imperfection and they were definitely short-changed!
Today there's no excuse for
falling into the same trap. Tons of research shows what food processing does to cereals.
When whole grains are refined in order to remove the bran (the outer layer) and germ (the portion that sprouts new plants), they're also stripped of other important nutrients.
They lose 95% of their vitamin E content, 87% of their vitamin
B6, 85% of their magnesium, 52% of their selenium and 40% of their folic acid and vitamin
B12.
Wheat, for example, has twenty-five nutrients removed in the refining process that
turns it into white flour, yet only four (iron, B1, B2 and B3) are replaced in some foods.
What
are we left with? Very little, it seems, mainly "empty" calories, which rob our bodies of protection
against chronic disease and make us fat in the process.
Consuming refined grains on a
regular basis can actually cause many conditions.
Just as an example, in many parts
of Asia, white rice supplies up to 80% of the total calories. White rice is particularly deficient of
thiamine (or vitamin B1) and a severe deficiency of this vitamin results in the condition known as
beriberi.
This condition - characterized by extreme loss of appetite, congestive heart
failure, water retention, psychosis (disorientation, hallucination, loss of memory, etc.), muscle pain and
other symptoms of disturbed nerve function - could be prevented if people simply ate brown
rice.
Whole grain foods are rich in an array of disease-fighting chemicals - antioxidants, tumor
suppressors, cholesterol reducers, insulin regulators and vitamin E, folic acid, zinc, selenium and
magnesium.
A diet rich in whole grain foods can prevent a host of nutritional deficiencies and
has been shown to be protective against:
Foods with * are gluten free.
It's especially important to ask yourself the question "what are whole grains" when you are
surrounded by an array of products that claim to contain healthy grains. Some labels are very misleading.
For example, some breads say "seven grains", or "bran" or "made with wheat flour", giving the impression
they're made with whole grains when they're not.
How can you be sure that bread, pasta, crackers
and so on are whole grains? Read the label carefully. The first ingredient on the list must have the word
"whole" in it, such as whole wheat (also called graham flour), whole oats, whole rye flour and whole
barley.
You may have seen on the market new breads called 'wholegrain white breads'. Even
though they're wholemeal, they look like white bread because they're made from a special variety of wheat
(albino wheat) that is light in colour, plus a host of 'dough conditioners' that keep the bread soft like
white bread.
These breads are more processed than regular wholemeal breads because the whole
grains are pulverized into tiny bits by special machinery to make the bread smooth and unfortunately this
kind of process raises their Glycemic Index value.
Some other brands of white bread have suddenly become 'high fiber' without looking or tasting any
different. They replace up to 1/4 of the white flour with flour made from a particular type of corn, called
Hi-maize resistant starch.
Hi-maize corn flour isn't made from genetically modified
maize, but it's been developed from a natural type of maize that contains high amylose starch. It acts like
dietary fiber in the intestine providing all the same health benefits.
But can Hi-maize be
considered a 'whole food'? Although it's touted as such in most articles I've looked at, it cannot be
considered a whole grain. Why not?
Well, for one thing it's extremely processed and refined to make it into a fine flour. Then, if you do some
research as well, you'll see the trademark symbol after the name. If it was a natural occurring food it
couldn't be patented but it would be widely available, so it's either a patented formula or a patented
process.
There's no doubt that resistant starch is extremely beneficial for our health, the same
way as fiber is, but it's also present in other foods, such as unprocessed whole grains, peas and lentils,
unripe bananas and other beans.
Black beans, for instance, contain the highest amount of total
dietary fiber - 43% - and 63% of their total starch content is resistant starch.
Having answered the question, I hope satisfactorily, What are whole grains? now you can either go back to
the Whole Grain Foods main page or go to the Next page.
RELATED ARTICLES:
Benefits of Fiber and High-fiber foods in your Diet
Return to Foods' Healing Power Homepage from What Are Whole Grains?
Slow Carbs vs Fast Carbs - What Makes Some Carbs Better than Others?
Glycemic Index of Foods - What is It?
Glycemic Index and Glycemic Load -What is the Difference?
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