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.