Get More Whole Grain Goodness in Your Diet

One thing I love about our American society is that when we come up with good nutrition wisdom, it gets shared nationwide most effectively. What I do not like about our society: everything else related to our eating habits. Frankly, I find it a little ridiculous (okay, a lot ridiculous-who needs to bother with being polite to the food industry?) that the notion of whole grains is presented as a new phenomenon in healthy eating advice. Originally, all grain food was whole grain. We've just managed through the sophistication of our technology and our food palettes to take all of that super healthy nutrition out of our grains in order to have a finer food product with a longer shelf-life (the food industry would play "The Hallelujah Chorus" after that last part).

There are some things that really don't make sense to turn into whole grain products: cakes, cookies, pancakes, pastries. These are the things white flour was originally developed for. It makes for a lighter, fluffier, more beautiful delicacy. There are some things that never should have lost their whole grain goodness: bread, crackers, tortillas, muffins, cereal. You get the idea. And if we're really paying attention to how we eat, we won't need the whole grain snacks anyway, because we will be getting plenty of whole grain with our breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and eating little enough of the treats that it won't matter if they're whole grain or not. And I've gotta say, if you're eating a whole grain store bought cookie, you're putting a lot of chemicals and corn syrup in your body that do more harm than the little bit of whole grain that goes in with it does good. If you really care about that cookie having some benefit to your body, make it at home yourself with whole grain flour. Or ditch everyday white flour products (bread, crackers, etc.) and replace them with whole grain ones and enjoy the regular Chips 'Ahoy cookies you've grown up loving when you didn't know they could slowly poison you.

In truth, the food industry is beyond all reason, and it's up to us to keep a clear head about what is real food and what is not, and eat accordingly. And then, of course, you do have to close your ears, in part, to all the news out there about chemicals in our food, because it's virtually impossible to avoid, and after all, you have to eat and enjoy yourself. There are all sorts of stuff in our soil, water, and air, and on our "natural" food sources and it winds up in everything you eat, even if it's organic. I'm surprised we don't have a more prevalent number of people suffering from obsessive compulsive food paranoia in our country. All you have to do is watch the news to find something new to freak out about.

Anyway, I'm soap-boxing a little too much. What I really want to talk about is the benefits of whole grain and why it's such a big concern that we eat it. I learned about whole grains by reading The South Beach Diet book, and although I don't agree with everything about the diet (the guy makes you think fruit is a menace to your figure and tells you to never, ever eat a banana or pineapple again), the information about the difference between good carbs and bad carbs was invaluable to me. First of all, whole grain is not the same as whole wheat or multigrain. You have to get the entire substance of the grain into your body in order for it to be whole grain. That is where all the brown, crunchy stuff is that gets removed in heavily processed grains. But, more importantly, that is where all of the nutrients in whole grains exist, and if you don't eat it, you won't get it in your body. It gets stripped off in the processing to make white flour. So, if you read the ingredients list of a product and the first ingredient is "refined wheat flour" you know you are getting more white flour than whole grain flour. Ideally, the first ingredient should be some kind of whole grain flour. If the list says "enriched" flour that means that all of the vitamins that got removed from the grain have been synthetically added back in to the flour. That's why you can read a long list of vitamins and minerals on the ingredient list of a product that has no fiber and is virtually all sugar. You might as well eat a handful of white flour and a handful of sugar and take a multivitamin. No, it won't taste as good.

Whole grain is good for your heart the same way fiber is good for it. It helps clear the arteries and keep them clean and up to par. Plus all of the vitamins and minerals in whole grains keep your blood and organs healthy. Your body functions better. Be wary of a lot of the newer products, like sugar cereals, that say they are now made with whole grain. If there is less than two grams of fiber per serving, there isn't much whole grain in there, either. Fiber helps sweep out your digestive track, keep your colon clean, and keep you regular. It also provides better, slower-burning energy for your body. Your body has to work to digest a tough serving of, say, brown rice, whereas white rice (just like cake) hits your stomach and is broken down quickly and floods your blood stream with, essentially, sugar. Everything becomes sugar when it's digested-that's what fuel is inside the body. But carbs that are converted into sugar quickly will also increase your blood sugar level much more quickly (a bad thing for your heart, your stress level, your waist, and your chance of developing diabetes). They will also be burned off or stored more quickly, causing you to be hungry much sooner. A good serving of brown rice will keep your body busy for a while just breaking it down and making use of it. Which means that just eating it is a bit of a work out for you, plus it will take longer to burn off, which means that you will eat less throughout the day if you take care to eat whole grains in place of refined ones whenever you can. It's the old-age difference between the good complex carbohydrates and the less-than-beneficial simple carbohydrates. And fundamentally, calories in vs. calories out is the key to maintaining weight. If you like the type and number of calories that go in you each day, and like the number of calories you burn off each day, but you do not like your weight, you will maintain your weight until you change your calories in/out ratio. And switching from regular cookies to whole grain ones won't help. But avoiding "bad carbs" (the simple, refined ones) and focusing on "good carbs" (the complex, high fiber ones) will make a huge difference.

If you consume a reasonable amount of fiber and whole grain each day, the amount of fat you eat will be less detrimental to your heart, because the fat and cholesterol are removed by the good carbs. You will also crave less sugar, because your body's need for sugar is more fully met by whole grains that stick around in the body longer. A highly refined wheat product is about like eating sugar candy. It hits your blood stream fast, flooding your system with sugar, which in turn triggers a flood of insulin to manage the sugar (too much of which is very bad for your waistline and heart), and results in a huge crash in energy, a drop in blood sugar levels, and a craving for pure sugar. Too much of this insulin routine coupled with being overweight can develop diabetes.

To show you just how easy it is to transform your diet into a whole grain powerhouse each day, here's a simple menu showing where whole grain products can be tastefully substituted for white ones.

Breakfast: a bowl of high fiber cereal (just make sure it actually tastes good, because some of them don't), OR whole grain toast or bagel with jelly or cream cheese, OR a bowl of slow-cook or even steel cut oatmeal.

Lunch: a favorite sandwich on whole grain bread, a serving of whole grain crackers (instead of chips-make sure they taste good).

Dinner: Any dish made with rice can be replaced with brown rice (quick brown rice cooks in about ten minutes quite easily). Any pasta dish can be replaced with whole grain pasta. Anything using tortillas can be eaten with whole grain tortillas (just taste-test to find a brand that is soft, because many of them can be chewy and tough). You can also serve the rice or noodles or couscous or bread as a side-dish, or serve whole grain crackers with your meal. Also, the whole grain hamburger and hotdog buns are an excellent sub for the white ones.

Some of my favorite sources of whole grain for myself and my kid are: whole grain goldfish crackers, whole grain mini bagels, whole grain bread, brown rice, whole grain pastas. They're things that can easily be worked into each meal or snack, pack a huge nutrition punch, and taste great.

Basically, you can eat normal, just sub the good old-fashioned version of the grain product for the highly processed and refined version. Just make a commitment to changing the items you buy at the grocery store to the whole grain version, and eat the same menu you normally would. As always, the more home made your food is the more natural it will be, because it will be free of preservatives, flavor enhancers, artificial colors and flavors, etc. And there's the added bonus of being able to add the whole grain pasta or rice or whatever to the dish or on the side. Making these changes results in a huge health benefit that makes a significant impact on your quality of life, with little effort on your part.