In Praise of Whole Grains

 

The quick answer:  To optimize value and nutrition, eat a variety of whole grains, (unless you have a tolerance problem).

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Grains:  Good or Bad?

Grains really are the staff of life—2/3 of the world population would starve without them.  Depending on the region, rice, wheat or corn are popular forms.  Over the last century health enthusiasts have advocated a return to eating grains whole, rejecting the modern refined form for lack of vital nutrients.  (Whole grains are high in nutrients and low in calories; it’s the opposite for refined grains.)  Society has generally ignored this guidance, preferring the sweetness of refined grains, though this is now changing. 

In recent years advocates of the Atkins, or of the Paleo diet, have argued against grains.  In addition, a small, but growing, fraction of the population do not tolerate gluten so must avoid certain grains (wheat, rye, barley, spelt, karmut, triticale, and sometimes oats).   Celiac disease is a potentially fatal form of gluten intolerance.

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010 recommends eating at least three services of whole grains daily.  The Whole Grains Council notes these proven benefits of eating whole grains, vs. refined forms:

• Risk of stroke reduced 30-36%.
• Type 2 diabetes risk reduced 21-30%.
• Heart disease risk reduced by 25-28%
• Better weight control
• Reduced risk of asthma, inflammatory diseases, high blood pressure, and gum disease or tooth loss.

In our home, we eat a variety of whole grains and avoid refined white flour (except for making sauce or the occasional cake).  Here’s a summary of recent posts about grains:

The Whole Darn Grain:  This was the first post on grain and it introduced the “fiber-greater-than-sugar” rule for purchased cereal products.

Are Carbs Good or Bad?  A post influenced by Gary Taubes’ book, Good Calories, Bad Calories, provided ten steps to a lower, and healthier, glycemic index.

The Bread of Life:  We eat our weight in flour each year; for most less than 10% is whole grain.  This post solicited reader’s favorite bread recipes.

A Few Good Women:  The story of May Yates, a food heroine, who fought for whole wheat bread in England. 

Flour and The Hundred Years War:  Discussed the issue of freshness and preservation of whole grain flours and suggested grinding close to time of use.

The Good Breakfast:  This is the easiest meal to make completely healthy.  See the link to Healthy Recipe #1:  Breakfast Compote.

Waking Up In The Bread Aisle:  This popular aisle visit discussed the practice of “slotting fees,” then examined the bread for sale in a typical supermarket and found just 3 of 70 met the fiber health rule. 

Trouble In The Cereal Aisle:  In this post we spend a Friday evening in the cereal aisle and find just 8 of 128 meet our fiber-greater-than-sugar rule.

Healthy Change

Comment:  Whole grains are one of the best food values but we think it best to enjoy a variety.  Please comment on how you include whole grains in the diet of your family, or share a favorite recipe. 

Need a reminder? Download our Healthy Change reminder card. Print and fold, then place in your kitchen or on your bathroom mirror to help you remember the Healthy Change of the week.

Whole Wheat Bread Recipe

Love reading old cookbooks?  A cookbook is a snapshot of the nutrition beliefs of its time.  Gathered together they document the 20^th century drift that produced the modern American diet (MAD).  Anyone, it seems, can write a cookbook—even an imaginary person like Betty Crocker, the #1 best seller.  It helps if the cookbook is funny—Irma Rombauer’s Joy of Cooking is the #3 all time best seller.  It also helps if the cookbook offers the promise of skinny—In The Kitchen with Rosie, a guide to low-calorie cuisine by Oprah’s cook, was the best selling book of 1995.

It’s more complicated for the “healthy” cookbooks because there’s so much confusion over what to eat.  The bestseller in this category is The New American Heart Association Cookbook.  Unfortunately the AHA falsely believed that dietary saturated fat and cholesterol was the main cause of heart disease.  We wasted a generation on that false premise and you still find people who should know better steering us away from saturated fats.  We discussed heart disease last hear here and here and we’ll return to the subject later in 2012. 

Healthy Cookbooks

There are some prolific writers of healthier cookbooks.  Alice Waters launched the local food movement, publishing cookbooks from her Berkeley Chez Panisse restaurant for 40 years.  Mark Bittmin wrote the “Minimalist” column in the N. Y. Times for 13 years and penned a series of best selling cookbooks, starting with Leafy Greens in 1995. 

We asked our own readers about their favorite healthy cookbooks.  Nearly 30 titles were suggested (see comments) but two tied for first place:

• Natural Everyday by Heidi Swanson
• America’s Test Kitchen Healthy Family Cookbook, now in a 3^rd edition.  (The Apple Crisp was highly recommended.) 

This Week’s Recipe

This week’s Healthy Change requires a recipe for whole wheat bread.  A good source of health information can be found at the Whole Grains Council.  They document these health benefits for whole grains:

• Stroke risk reduced 30-36%
• Risk of type 2 diabetes reduced 21-30%
• Heart Disease risk reduced 25-28%
• Better weight management

Whole Wheat Bread

We developed a recipe last year but I actually preferred the recipe by reader NanO, which I slightly revised:

Ingredients (Makes 4 loaves)

4-1/2 cups warm filtered water

1 T yeast

½ cup vital wheat gluten

1 each 500 mg vitamin C pill, crushed (helps gluten develop)

4 cups freshly ground hard red whole-wheat flour

2 cups whole white wheat (or enriched flour)

½ cup healthy oil (Canola, etc.)

½ cup honey (or agave nectar)

1 T salt, rounded

4-6 cups freshly ground whole-wheat flour

Directions

1. Combine first 6 ingredients (up to, but not including oil) well and let sit for 10 minutes.
2. Add oil, honey, salt and 4 cups of whole wheat four. 
3. Knead in mixer 6-8 minutes, slowly adding last 2 cups of flour as needed for flour to pull away from bowl and form a ball that is not too stiff.  Let sit for 10 minutes. 
4. Form into 4 equal loaves and place in oiled bread pan.  Let rise until height doubles.  Bake at 350 degrees 35-40 minutes.

Note:  I like to grind the wheat on a hand grinder—it’s a good workout.  We don’t stock vitamin C pills so I add the juice of one orange—it seems to work.  The beautiful wife prefers that white flour or enriched flour be included for a lighter loaf so I includes 2 cups in the recipe; if you prefer a “wheatier” bread, use all whole hard red whole wheat flour.  The trick when adding the final flour is to get the dough stiff enough to not be sticky, but not too stiff.  Just takes a little experience.  I warm the oven slightly, then turn it off, and let the bread rise in a warm oven.  I do remove the bread while the oven is heated to 350.

Sourdough comment:  Reader Lindsey noted the merits of sourdough bread.  Sources cite benefits such as greater phytate reduction, lower glycemic index, and improved gluten digestion.  Should we include a recipe for sourdough whole wheat bread in our 52 breakthrough recipes?  Please share your sourdough experience.

The Bread of Life

The quick answer:  Your bread should be like your breakfast cereal, whole grain with more natural fiber than added sugar.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Connecting

Peering into the distant past in search of ancestors can be fascinating.  The TV program Who Do You Think You Are?, follows celebrities as they discover their origins.  Reba McEntire, the country music singer, followed an ancestor from the 1700s that came to America as an indentured servant.  He came at the tender age of ten but survived to prosper in the New World.  Reba traced his steps back to England to learn his story.  Walking in the footprints of our ancestors helps us to understand who we are. 

Want to connect with your ancient ancestors by doing something they did?  Make bread.  There’s something primeval about making bread, especially if you hand knead.  The traditional ingredients—flour, water, yeast, salt, honey, and oil or butter—have scarcely changed in mankind’s history.  One pillar of the food reformation is the rediscovery of traditional whole grain breads.

Americans eat their weight in flour each year, roughly speaking.  Most of this flour is eaten as bread but only 10% of flour, on average, is eaten whole; 90% is refined.  Whole flour is rich in vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, fiber, and other needed nutrients.  So this post is about the importance of whole grain bread.

Standard Bread

How did flour, and bread, lose these needed nutrients?  They were lost in man’s restless and relentless search for the next new thing.  In the 1873 Vienna World’s Fair flour from a new invention, the roller mill, was introduced.  The roller mill efficiently separated the bran and germ from wheat, leaving flour that was white and sweet, but lacking in nutrition.  Pastries made of this refined flour became a new taste sensation and healthier flours were soon pushed to the sidelines.  Brown bread was out; white was in.

With each generation, as human health declined, reform movements called for a return to whole grain flours.  Governments are indifferent to the health of the people except at wartime.  Wars can’t be won without strong bodies.  In England, before World War I, the Bread Reform League restored whole grain breads with a law defining standard bread.  It’s said you can still buy standard bread in the UK.

In the U.S., at the start of World War II, the poor health of army recruits was a concern.  Congress quickly approved enriched flour, in which synthetic forms of a few of the missing ingredients were returned as additives.  For better or worse, we still use this so-called enriched flour, though further adjustments have been made.

Waking Up In The Bread Aisle:

Last year the beautiful wife and I spent a Friday night in the bread aisle of a typical grocery store, searching out the healthy breads.  It was our most widely commented food post.  We applied two criteria to the breads:

1. The flour must be whole grain.
2. The grams of natural fiber must exceed the grams of sugar.

The first rule was more for information because natural fiber can only exceed added sugar, if whole grains are used.  Of the 70 breads available that night, just five met the rule.  Three were from Oroweat; Milton’s and Food For Life each had one. 

In a recent post, The Good Breakfast, we applied the more-fiber-than-sugar rule to breakfast cereals.  The rule is a good guide for all cereal products regularly eaten.

In this post, we shared a reader’s time-tested recipe for whole wheat bread.

Please comment.  What is your family’s favorite bread?  Do you have a great recipe to share?  Any bread making tips to share?

Need a reminder? Download our Healthy Change. Print and fold, then place in your kitchen or on your bathroom mirror to help you remember the Healthy Change of the week.

flour and the hundred year wars

Some six centuries ago, the ruling dynasties of France and England got into a long-running feud known as the Hundred Years’ War.  Shakespeare wrote a play, Henry V, about it.  That may seem a long time to settle a difference, but it was nothing when you consider the Flour War of our time.  Here are some highlights of this modern conflict:

• A new kind of flour was introduced in the 1880s, made with roller mills instead of the traditional millstones.  The roller mills efficiently removed the bran and germ, yielding flour that was fluffy and sweet but missing most of the nutrients.  Because it was modern, everybody wanted it.

• In a few decades the traditional water-powered stone mills found in most towns were made obsolete.  The roller mills were more efficient and because the flour had a long shelf life (weevils couldn’t survive on it), the nation could be supplied from a few large factories using the railroads.

• A few wise people opposed the new flour, arguing that something vital had been removed.  They were right; scientists would later uncover the role of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, fiber, and other nutrients. The health problems that followed were simply bandaged over:

- Enriched flour:  At the start of World War II an alarming number of recruits were not healthy enough to serve so synthetic versions of three B complex vitamins, plus iron, were arbitrarily returned to flour.

- Folic acid:  In 1998 folic acid (a precursor to vitamin B9) was added to reduce the incidence of neural tube birth defects such as spina bifida.  For details look here.

• Over time, a growing stack of scientific studies documented the many health benefits of eating whole grains.  A summary collected by the Whole Grains Council can be seen here.

• As a result, over a century later, concerned mothers and cooks in growing numbers are now shunning refined flour and returning to whole grains.  The government has even seen the light, sort of.  The Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010 calls for at least half of grains consumed to be whole. 

Though it isn’t quite over, we can learn a lesson from the flour war:

1. When a natural food is industrialized, it can take a generation or so for the health consequences to be confirmed.
2. Another generation is required for scientists to gather enough evidence to establish cause and effect.
3. A final generation is required to wean the public off the offending food. 

Do you see our predicament?  In the century it can take to detect, prove, and remedy a dietary error, a multitude of new mistakes can be introduced.  Unless we change this paradigm, things just get worse.  Previously we suggested this rule:  Do not eat new food-like inventions less than a century old. “Wait a minute,” you might say.  “That means we eat what our great-grandparents ate because most of the invented foods turn out to be unhealthy!”  Yes, that’s pretty much how it is; fortunately there are a lot of great traditional foods. 

This brings us back to whole grain flour, which you can now buy from companies like Bob’s Red Mill and King Arthur Flour.  I value these companies and their healthy products, including whole grain flours.  However, a reader pointed out that grinding wheat into flour exposes the nutrients to oxidation and spoilage during storage.  The best practice, he inferred, is to grind your own flour close to the moment of use.  My father did this; I remember him setting up a manual wheat grinder each week when he made bread.  I know he got a good workout because he was pretty strong, right up to his death. 

I checked the whole grain flours in my pantry for expiration date and then called the companies to ask how they decided when it was too old to use.   One company sold their flour in a paper bag with a one-year “use by” date.  The other company had a plastic liner in their bag to help protect the flour, which gave a one-year “sell by” date plus six months’ storage in your home.  Then I got a surprise: Both companies told me that flour should be stored in the refrigerator or, better yet, the freezer.  “But that instruction isn’t on the bag,” I rejoined (you’ll recall I had the flour in my pantry).  There was an awkward silence.  I was a little concerned as my flours were about four months old when I bought them so they were currently six months old and had never been protected by refrigeration.    

All this made me even more curious to understand how they decided when flour was too old to use.  Thinking it would help, I explained I wrote a nutrition blog.  Whoops.  That was the end of the conversation; I was routed to a public relations person at one company and a quality manager at the other.  One never called back, the other called back after a week.  I don’t fault them too much; working people often have many demands on their time.  I don’t have the final answer to how they judge when a product is too old to use but was given the impression it had more to do with taste than the viability of the nutrients.  (A bitter taste and rancid odor are classic signs that flour’s essential fats have been oxidized.)  When I learn more I will share it.

King Arthur referred me to a good study on the benefit of using fresh-ground flour at this site (please ignore the plug given to the wheat grinder used, it’s not our intention to endorse any product).  Bread was baked using two kinds of whole flour: freshly ground and store-purchased (older, but age not given).  The result?  The fresh flour rose faster and tasted sweeter than the older flour, which had a “bitter tang”.   Taste was reason enough to use fresh-ground flour but I had read earlier how yeast was used to study the action of vitamins.  From this work it made sense that whatever made yeast grow better might also be more nutritious for humans. 

This is probably the end of the flour posts, so here is the bottom line: 

1. Store-bought whole grain flour is always healthier than the white stuff. 
2. For occasional use, purchase whole grain flour but store it in your freezer or refrigeration.  Observe the expiration date.
3. For regular bread making, grind your own wheat.  If you don’t have your own grinder, work out a solution with your friends.  (Women are so good at this!)

I didn’t see this at first, but here is a last thought:  Refined flour was a mistake but the Industrial Revolution that caused it also brought us the solution: affordable wheat grinders we could use in our own home.  (It’s quite convenient: your ancestors likely spent half-a-day each month or so hauling their wheat to the local mill and had to give 10% to the miller as a fee.)

Please share your experience with home-ground flour.

Need a reminder? Download our Healthy Change reminder card. Print and fold, then place in your kitchen or on your bathroom mirror to help you remember the Healthy Change of the week.

Are Carbs Good or Bad?

It depends.  The goodness of Nature is displayed in the root vegetables above.  The whole grains, dried beans and nuts kept in bins at the health food store look pretty good too.  If I wander the center aisles in my grocery store—where the 4 “C’s” of chips, crackers, cookies and candy are found—it gets sketchy.  Farm carbs look good, factory carbs not so much.  Is it that simple?

One thing to remember about carbs—without them the planet starves.  Carbs provide over 60% of energy calories around the world, almost 55% in the U.S.  Carbs are the stuff of life.  The biggest carb crops are rice, wheat, and corn.  To that add legumes and root crops.  There’s also a bit in the other vegetables, as well as fruit, and nuts. 

Carbs have to be humble.  Fats have fancy essential fatty acids like the omega-3s.  Eat them or lose your wits.  Proteins have essential amino acids critical to growth.  But carbs are just a clean-burning fuel that is the best value for energy and nutrients you can find.  Which is where the trouble started.  Factories thrive on cheap raw materials.  The first industrialized products were sugar, polished rice, and refined flours.  In each case vital nutrients were removed to provide white, sweet-tasting carbs with a long shelf life.  Tasty but unnatural. 

These refined carbs introduced a new problem—blood glucose peaks.  You’ll remember from the post The Skinny On Being Overweight that surges in blood sugar elevate blood insulin, and insulin packs the sugar away into our cells as fat and keeps it there.  So a key to solving the national excess of fat is to reverse the process by leveling the blood glucose level.  Real food stabilizes blood glucose and reduces the insulin level, which allows cellular fat to be burned for energy so we can have lean, healthy bodies. 

This works pretty well for most people, but not all.  We’re all different; some can add weight on a diet that others starve on.  In 19^th century England there was an obese guy named William Banting who could not lose weight to save his life.  Excuse the play on words.  Long story short, Banting was introduced to what we call a low-carb diet (no bread, beer, sugar, potatoes, etc. and lots of meat), lost his excess weight, and restored his health.  Today the Banting approach to eating is known as the Atkins Diet.  The Paleo diet is a variation of this and the French are rediscovering it as the Dukan diet.

The conflict is that the Atkins Diet replaces grains with meat.  This is a simplification, as the diet also calls for low glycemic index whole foods of all types. (Glycemic index, G.I., is a measure of how fast the sugar in foods gets into our blood.)   Reducing dietary grain in favor of meat is a problem because it runs contrary to food tradition, the Word of Wisdom, and a lot of science.  Should a morbidly overweight person who has tried everything else try this?  It’s a question to take up with your doctor.  Whatever the decision, we wish you well.  Stay in touch and let us know how you do.

For most people, replacing factory carbs with farm carbs is the first step towards better health (and should also help with any excess weight).  The Healthy Changes are strategic steps towards doing this.  Here is some math to keep in mind: 

The recent Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010 recommends that carbs comprise about 55% of our calories.  The AHA has recommended that refined sugars not exceed 5% of our calories (on a 2000 calorie diet, 5% of carbs is the recommended 6 tsp.).  Therefore, if we get 50% of our calories from whole carbs and limit added sugar to 5% of calories, a healthy but enjoyable diet totaling the recommended 55% carbs is possible.

Here are ten steps that lower G.I. by returning to whole carbs from the farm:

1. Reduce intake of sugary drinks, and candy.

2. Eat a healthy breakfast of whole grains.

3. Replace polished white rice with brown rice or long grain wild rice.

4. Choose whole grain pasta and prepare it al dente to lower the G.I.  Avoid tomato sauce with added sugar.

5. Eat 2-3 servings daily of whole grains.  See Harvard SPH’s “Health Gains from Whole Grains”. 

6. Apply the “whole grain, more fiber than sugar” rule to chips, crackers, cookies and pastries, and use them as special occasion treats.

7. Restore legumes to the daily diet—they’re the best value in food.

8. Choose fruit over fruit juices, or make your own juice from the whole fruit.

9. Eat more nuts and seeds—they’re high in energy but have other benefits.

10. Eat 4-5 daily servings of vegetables. 

Planning a weekly menu will simplify your life, improve your health, and save you money.  Please share your experiences—the challenges and the benefits—with menu planning. Later this week we will share a weekly menu plan which you can print and use.

Need a reminder? Download our Healthy Change reminder card. Print and fold, then place in your kitchen or on your bathroom mirror to help you remember the Healthy Change of the week.

Waking Up in the Bread Aisle

In the last post we promised to check our local supermarket for breads that met Healthy Change #9:  Your daily bread must be whole grain, with more grams of natural fiber than added sugar.  To do this we spent a Friday evening studying the labels of 70 different breads; the short answer is just two bakeries met the rule and one came close (their fiber wasn’t all natural):

• Food For Life offers their Ezekiel 4:9 sprouted-grain breads, named after the Bible scripture with a bread recipe.  A slice typically contains 3 grams of fiber and no sugar—the only company we found that doesn’t add sweeteners.  Price $4.49; on sale for $3.99.  (In some stores their bread is kept in the frozen food section to preserve freshness.)

• Oroweat offers bread at all the quality levels (but watch the sugar in some of their whole wheat breads, it's often equal to the fiber). Their Healthfull brand (Nutty Grain, 10-Grain, and Hearty Wheat) had 4 grams of fiber and 2 grams sugar.  Price $4.59; on sale for $2.99 

• Milton’s Whole Grain Plus had 5 grams of fiber and 3 grams of sugar per slice.  (Three grams of fiber are all you can usually get from a slice of whole wheat; breads offering more may not meet the natural fiber requirement.)  The sugar was a combination of brown sugar and honey, so give them a point for slightly better sugars.  Price $4.59; on sale for $3.49.

The bread companies are in a difficult place; people generally have a dim view of store-bought bread and the low-carb diet folks think bread is unhealthy.  The store manager approached me in one store (after all, I was standing there looking at his goods and making notes in a black notebook).  “I’m looking for your healthiest bread,” I told him.  His response was interesting: “Is any bread healthy?”  I laughed with him but answered, “Yes, a few are”. 

I asked him how they decide which breads get the best shelf space and he answered, “Simple, slotting fees.  I think we make more on renting out the shelf space than we do selling the bread”.   I looked down the aisle and saw Oroweat had the biggest space followed by the store brand and then Sara Lee.  There was a small section for Wonder bread on the lowest shelf, a sign of its fall from grace.

The bread aisle is a strange place.  First, it doesn’t smell like bread, it smells chemical, kind of like plastic.  Second, in a desperate attempt to get our attention over 70 different kinds of bread are offered, each with the most extravagant label claims the FDA will allow.  Labels that say “100% wheat” aren’t actually whole wheat.  And the label that says “With Whole Wheat” may only have a little whole grain mixed in with the refined grains.  Third, there is the issue of past fibs, like Wonder bread building strong bodies, 8, 10, then 12 different ways.  Is it any surprise the public is properly skeptical?

Here’s another issue:  Is there a premium for healthy bread?  The answer is “Yes”.  The healthiest breads were the highest priced, around $4.59 unless on sale, though the difference in ingredients only makes a slight difference in material costs.  Is the cheapest bread the least healthy?  Again, the answer is “Yes”.  The cheapest bread was sold under the Supervalu label, price $1.39 but on sale for $.99.  It’s not actually that much cheaper per pound because the loaf is lighter.  And it has the worst ingredients, including high fructose corn syrup.  (The store manager whispered in my ear that Supervalu was controlled by the store—they just didn’t want their name on the worst bread.) 

Would you want to eat 99-cent bread?  It’s a trick question, because you can bake your own perfectly healthful bread for about this price, not counting the cost of firing of the oven.  Yes, I know what you’re thinking—this presumes the cook isn’t getting paid for her hour of work.  But we know the answer to that—the pay she (or he) receives is dearer than money.  In a later post we’ll share our favorite of the bread recipes you submitted. 

For the times when it’s not possible to bake your own bread, here are my personal favorites, though they’re not available where I live:  One is Great Harvest, which sells through franchise stores.  Prairie Grain Bread Co. is the other.  The whole wheat breads meet the fiber rule and have just five or six ingredients.  (The typical store-bought breads have 12-20 ingredients, many of them chemicals.) 

A last comment from the store manager on slotting fees:  “If you really want to see how these fees work, visit the chip aisle.”  So on my way out I visited the chip aisle—I’ll save what I learned for the next (and last) post on converting our diet to whole grains. 

If this post is helpful, would you please share it with your friends?  It’s a way to thank my wife for spending her Friday night in the bread aisle.

A Few Good Women

Here’s an observation: Though men mainly invent and manufacture (unhealthy) factory foods, women most often protect us from the consequences.  I keep a list of heroines of nutrition—women who challenged the established but erroneous beliefs of their day.  (There are a few good men on the list also.)  Although science is about the search for knowledge, reformers fighting for a new truth must endure the wrath of those invested in the old truth.  So it’s good to remember those who struggled to improve the world of nutrition—like May Yates (1850-1938).  To appreciate the story of this good woman, we need a bit of history:

In the 1870s a new process for making flour that used steel rollers instead of the traditional millstone was invented.  This new method also separated the bran and germ from the endosperm, making flour that was finer and cheaper.  (The lost bran and germ was fed to farm animals, lucky creatures.)  The new flour, pleasingly white and modern, quickly dominated the market—out with the old, in with the new.  This was a critical change because grains provide more of mankind’s daily energy than any other food group.

Food innovations often have unintended consequences and this was the case with the roller mill.  It took time to understand what had been thrown out with the bran and germ.  Vitamins had not yet been discovered, that was a generation off.  The function of the missing minerals was unknown.  And the importance of fiber and antioxidants was also a mystery.  By the time these things became known eating habits had changed and we, like the sheep who lost their way, were caught in history’s biggest food experiment:  “What happens to a civilization if the vital nutrients in grains are removed from the diet?” 

The harm was hard to measure as it happened before public health data was kept, and modern flour was only one of three food disasters:

•  Cheap sugar following the Civil War,

•  Refined white flour in the late 1800s, and

•  Trans fats in the early 1900s (via hydrogenated margarine and shortenings like Crisco)

Now back to our heroine.  May Yates was a society artist who lived in England after the consumption of refined flour was well established.  She took a vacation trip to Sicily, where people were still eating traditional whole grains.  Yates noted the robust physical condition of the Italians and contrasted this to the poor health of the English.  It was concluded that a primary cause of England’s declining health was the use of modern refined flour.  Yates was so moved by this tragedy that she returned home determined to return whole grains to the diet.  She devoted her life to this new cause, selling her jewelry to finance her crusade, and founding the Bread Reform League.  In 1909 the league successfully established ”standard bread”—made with 80% whole grains—as the norm in England.

Americans eat their weight (more or less) in grains each year, but 90% of the grains are not whole.  That’s a lot of lost nutrients—our goal is to reverse that ratio.  We started with breakfast cereal, this post is about bread, a future post will address the other grains in our diet. 

The other night we went through the bread aisle of the local grocery store, comparing the healthiness of a confusing number of breads.  We’ll report the findings in our next post.  In the kitchen we’ve been experimenting with bread recipes using whole grains—do you have one you like?  Also, please share your ideas for restoring whole grains to the American diet.

Need a reminder? Download our Healthy Change reminder card. Print and fold, then place in your kitchen or on your bathroom mirror to help you remember the Healthy Change of the week.

Trouble in the Cereal Aisle

In “The Whole Darn Grain” I promised to visit the local grocery store and list the package cereals that met our Healthy Change #3: 

This rule is a simple device for selecting healthy breakfast cereals.  It works for processed foods as well.  Some, for example, have noticed that their “whole wheat” bread has more added sugar than fiber.  (Stay tuned; in a later post we’ll look at healthy breads.)

If you're wondering where to find the sugar and fiber amounts on your cereal at home, see the nutrition facts on the side of the cereal box. Under "Total Carbohydrates" it lists the fiber and the sugar (see the area circled in green below).

The logic behind this Healthy Change follows the daily dictums of three whole-grain servings and limited sugar consumption (6 tsp. max for women, 9 tsp. max for men, per the AHA).  Plus you get all the other benefits of whole grains, including fiber.  When little sugar is pre-added, the cereal can be sweetened and upgraded by adding fresh fruit in the home.

Here are the 8 cereals that met our rule and 5 that were close, out of the 128 package cereals inspected in a local store (Ralph’s, the cereal section was 60 feet long!).  The first number is the grams of fiber, the second is the grams of sugar:

     Nature’s Path Flax plus Multibran,  5/4

     Weetabix Whole Grain Biscuit, 4/2

     Kashi Go Lean Original, 10/6  (Soy is 1^st ingredient listed.)

     Kashi Heart to Heart, 5/5

     Post Grape Nuts, 7/5

     General Mills Kix, 3/3

     Post Shredded Wheat (spoon size), 6/0

     Ralph’s Shredded Wheat (spoon size), 7/<1

     Kellogg’s All Bran, 10/6

     Ralph’s Bran Flakes, 5/5

     General Mills Cheerios, 3/1

     Ralph’s Toasted Oats, 3/1

     General Mills Wheat Chex, 5/5

For the typical family concerned about health and value, hot cereals cooked at home from bulk whole grains are the best choice.  You can buy grains for a dollar or less per pound versus paying three to five dollars a pound for the less-healthy packaged cereals.  Keep a package or two of the store-bought cereals for occasional variety or when you’re unusually rushed. 

If you have a favorite healthy package cereal not on this list, please comment. It may not have been in the store we checked.

The Whole Darn Grain

The previous posts addressed what we eat too much of: sugar and trans fats.  This post is about what we eat too little of: whole grains.  Let’s look at wheat.  We eat more wheat than any other grain, about 140 pounds annually per the USDA.  In the 1880s a new method—the roller mill—was introduced for processing wheat.  What the roller mill did more efficiently than the old stone mills was to remove the most nutritious part: the germ and bran.  Germ and bran are rich in fiber, vitamins, minerals, lignans, antioxidants, and other live-giving phytonutrients.  Modern bleached flour, lacking these natural nutrients, is a nutritional tragedy—it keeps a long time on the shelf, but it won’t sustain health. 

For over a century nutritionists have decried the removal of natural nutrients from the nation’s flour and warned of dire consequences.  At the start of WWII eight vitamins and minerals were suddenly added because of the poor health of inducted soldiers.  There was no scientific evidence that a few synthetic supplements would replace the many nutrients removed; it was simply a wartime decision.  My Dad was a true believer in whole grains; he made our breakfast, baked great bread, and taught us this couplet:

            The whiter the bread,
            The sooner you’re dead.

Scientists have found truth in this saying.  Today there is a movement to salvage what was lost: the Department of Health in the 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans counseled returning to a diet of whole grains, asking for 3 servings daily.  We can do better.  Studies show that 80% of Americans consume less than one daily serving.  Whole grains are protective of many chronic diseases, as shown in the following studies:

•   Chronic diseases (Burkitt 1975)

•   Cancer (Jacobs 1998; Slavin 2000; Fung 2005)

•   Atherosclerosis (Malik 2007)

•   Coronary heart disease and stroke (Liu, 1999; Truswell 2002; Jacobs 2004; Flight 2006; Mellen 2008)

•   Weight gain and diabetes (Liu 2003; Venn 2004)

•   All-cause mortality (Jacobs 2000; Steffen 2003)

Here is a rule that will help in selecting healthy foods made from whole grains.  At first I used it to select a healthy breakfast cereal, but it can be applied to any cereal product, including chips, crackers and bakery items:

A warning about the reality of our food world: much of the stuff in the center of our grocery stores isn't healthy per this rule.  Among breakfast cereals Old Fashioned Quaker Oats complies.  Post Shredded Wheat biscuits are good too (but not the modern bite size ones coated with sugar).  Later this week I'll check the breakfast cereal section of my grocery store and post a list of qualifying "healthy" cereals.  It'll be short.

A caution about gluten intolerance, including Celiac disease:  Celiac disease is a serious life-threatening illness that requires careful avoidance of grains with gluten, including wheat.   Less than 1% of Americans have this condition but incidence has increased dramatically in the last decade.  The cause of the disease and the reason for the sudden growth is unknown, but the modern diet is a likely factor.  If you suspect you have this disease (it’s difficult to diagnose), consult your doctor.

Need a reminder? Download our Healthy Change reminder card. Print and fold, then place in your kitchen or on your bathroom mirror to help you remember the Healthy Change of the week.

healthy recipe #1: breakfast compote

Eating those commercial breakfast cereals is as American as, well, dental cavities.  Sorry, it’s a sad analogy.  Being a cost-conscious guy, over the years I have fumed at paying dollars per pound for store-bought products made of grains costing pennies per pound.  But my greater concern had to do with the unhealthiness of those products.  So I created a breakfast we call Breakfast Compote.  Composed of whole grains, nuts, and fruits, it’s not only healthier; it’s cheaper than the store-bought junk.  And it’s pretty quick; our compote can be made in less than 10 minutes (with a little practice).  This recipe is for two hungry people:

1. Prior day: To 1-1/4 cups hot water, add ¼ cup of cracked whole grains in a pan.  Soak over night.  (Our local whole foods store offers a nine-grain mixture, mostly cracked wheat.  After finishing breakfast, I prepare the mixture for the next day and place it on the back of the stove to soak.  For busy people, this saves drying and putting away the pan.)

2. Next morning: Bring the pot to a boil, add ¼ cup of rolled oats, and a similar amount of dried fruits, if desired.  Turn off the heat and let sit for five minutes.  (I buy my rolled oats from the same store.  Cranberries are the dried fruit we mostly add.  When fresh fruits are scarce, dried fruits can substitute.)

3. While the oats and dried fruits are cooking, prepare two bowls by adding to each:

-1 heaping tbsp of freshly ground flaxseed.  (I get the flaxseed from the same store as the grains.  Originally I ground it with a hand grinder, a good source of exercise, but now use a low-cost Cuisinart Spice and Nut Grinder for a finer grind.)

-2 heaping tbsp of crumbled pecans, or any freshly chopped nuts.

-A little honey, brown sugar, or grade B maple syrup, depending on the natural sweetness of the fruits added in step #4.  (Or a few drops of stevia.)

-Season to taste with cinnamon, cardomon, or nutmeg.  A few drops of vanilla works also.

4. Wash and prepare fruits in season, adding to each bowl:
-1/4 cup of berries.  (Blueberries mostly, but using all the berries in their season.)

-1/4 cup chopped apple or peach.  (Apples are available all year, peaches in summer.  We love the peaches, but nectarines are good too.) 
-1/2 orange, freshly juiced.  (I use an old hand juicer, also good exercise.  The orange juice provides a citrus fruit, while reducing or avoiding the need for milk, per your taste.)

5. Combine all ingredients into the bowls and enjoy. I like to add a little cream; it tastes good and can improve absorption of fat-soluble nutrients.  (I would love to find a source of unpasteurized cream from pasture-fed cows.)  If we have good whole-grain bread I also have some as toast with butter.  

We enjoy this breakfast on weekdays then have a special breakfast on Saturday for variety.  If you think of a way to make this healthier, tastier, or cheaper, please leave a comment. Or share your own ideas for a healthy start to the day.