You maybe sometimes hear about healthy grains. And you maybe sometimes wonder if in your menu there are healthy grains contained. Reality, healthy grains nowadays are reminded so much because they are considered the good choice or smart choice to our health. If you wonder about them, it is not so strange because we all concern our health strongly and pay our attention at any source that brings to us the benefits.
Look back the question that what would you usually have for breakfast if you don’t have much time? Perhaps a slice of bread with jam or butter and a glass of fruit juice, or a bowl of popcorn with milk, or a pancake with egg will be all good choices.
Bread, popcorn, pancake or some other kind of food…are all grain product. We know healthy grains are good of course, and how about the grain products that we consumed as above. Are they good? Related to grain products, you know that they could be made from whole grains or refined grains. And now let take a look about these two groups of grain products to think more about the benefits that they can bring to us.
Whole grain product
Whole grain products are made from whole grains (include bran, germ and endosperm) which could hold most of grain nutrients. These products could be bread, cereal; cookies, pasta…Brown rice and the flour made from whole grain are also in this group.
In fact, not all the products which mention “whole grain” on their packing contain 100% of whole grain. The manufacturers could show the whole grain content in many ways without the specific number. We could see some popular ways such as: whole grain, blend, multi grain, made with, or harvest wheat…Don’t be assured that they’re whole grain product and contain 100% whole grain, just take some time to check the ingredients and you could find out how many percent of whole grain is there in the product. Then you could choose the suitable product as you wish.
Refined grain product
The grain are spent a manufacture process to prolong their self-life (the bran and germ will be removed too) and become white grain or flour. The bread, noodle, spaghetti…which are made from refined flour and white rice are all refined grain products.
The refined grain products are not always less of nutrients, because they are could be enriched after processing, the nutrients like vitamins and minerals could be added back to ensure the nutrition content of the product. However, the fiber is mostly not added back to the product.
There are also blend grain products which are mixture of whole grain and refined grain.
Even whole, refined or blend grain product, we should check carefully the content on the label, because the details of the nutrients will be showed on it. Besides, some notes of the manufacturer are there too. The more careful we check the product out, the more useful we get.
Including, not all whole grain products are made from 100% of whole grains or not all refined grains products that are not good enough. The question is that you should check product labels before choosing and consuming and then you know more clearly that you are using healthy grains to us or not or how much percentage of healthy grains that you already used at least.
