Food Fact Fridays--The Goodness of Grains

While I have not yet completely my training as a Registered Dietitian (truthfully I have hardly begun it), I must admit that I have already developed “food Peeves." These peeves are actually related to the misconceptions about certain foods. One such peeve is the low carb diet that mentally stamps the word “BAD” over so many foods that can offer us an important ingredients to good health—whole grains.

In brief some of the benefits of whole grains:

· Fiber (you sooo knew that was comming didn't ya?)There are two kinds; soluble and insoluble. The first actually binds with the bile in our intestines and carries it out with our waste. This means that the cholesterol your body produced to digest the fats you ate will not be reabsorbed from your small intestines. The second kind of fiber, insoluble, simply adds bulk to your stool, giving you the necessary workout that is so vital to colon health.
· Phytochemicals. A bit of a buzz word that simply refers to the disease fighting chemicals inherent in the plant’s chemistry (ie. the red in a tomato’s skin) that pass on their benefit to us.
· Vitamins like E and the B set
· Minerals like copper and iron

How Much Do You Need?
The exact amount of whole grains per days depends on you r daily caloric needs; however, a good estimate is about 3 per day.

So what sorts of changes can you make?
Just changing a few of you purchasing habits can make a huge difference. Ellie Krieger, the Food Network’s official RD stated that experiencing the goodness of grains “is easier than it sounds...[ s]imply switching to 100 percent whole-wheat bread and starting your day with a whole-grain cereal will easily put you in the recommended range of three daily servings. To take it a step further, serve brown rice at dinner, make whole-wheat pasta, try whole-wheat couscous, and explore exotic grains like bulgur and quinoa. Choose corn tortillas and snack on baked corn chips or low-fat popcorn — all are whole grain.”

This is the perfect place to insert a little “buyer-beware” note. There is a difference in “whole wheat bread” and “Multi-Grain bread.” Lorna Sass in her book Whole Grains, Everyday, Every Way (see this post for my review) advices shoppers that although a product like bread may have incorporated more than one kind of flour (multi-grain) , it does not mean it contains either the bran or endosperm, the two primary nutrient powerhouses of wheat (whole grain). An easy way to pick out this difference is by looking for the whole grain stamp, special stamp that many companies use to identify their products that are truly whole grain. The Whole Grain Council developed this stamp and lots of insightful information on their website here.

Also …a special note to those with some sort of gluten intolerance… you can still have whole grains….check this resource out!

In Conclusion
I honestly thought I did ok in the area of whole grains until I did a nutritional analysis on myself earlier this year and found that I consumed 2x as much protein as was recommended and less than half of the desired amount of whole grains. It felt weird at first, but I gradually began to incorporate more whole grains in when I could. This was was a little tricky because my family a very much the meat-eater types, with proteins dominating every meal. So I changed up my breakfast a snack routine to incorporate what I could. Contrary to what the low-carb dieters might think, I did not gain a ton of weight. (In actuality, I have lost 4 pounds partly because of this dietary change and partly because of my new exercise routine.)

So do me a favor and just try to add the goodness of grains into your everyday.