Healthy Grain Consumption: Varied Choices, Cooking Methods, and Flour Product Tips

In traditional Chinese medicine, different grains are said to nourish different groups of organs. It is a good idea, therefore, to eat a wide range of grains and grain products, and not just restrict yourself to rice and wheat.

Cooking Methods for Grains

All grains can be cooked in the same ways - dry like rice, or soft and wet as porridge. So without having to learn too many recipes, one way to broaden your variety of grains would be simply to mix them. For example:

• Rice with barley, millet, oats, or corn
• Rice with quinoa or amaranth
• Millet with barley or corn
• Oat with corn

Avoid Puffed Cereals

While whole grains are generally good for health, there is one form of grain products that you should avoid - puffed cereals. These products are made similarly to popcorn - by "explosion." In the case of popped corn, heating over a normal fire is enough to cause this "explosion," so it may not be all that bad. However, other puffed cereals, such as puffed wheat, puffed millet, and brown rice crackers, are produced with extreme high temperature and pressure. The production conditions are totally unnatural. The result is that grains that normally require 45 minutes or longer cooking time get puffed and cooked in a matter of seconds.

Despite being made under highly artificial conditions, such products are typically sold at health and "natural" food stores and they are eaten by people who consider themselves health-conscious. Not a lot of scientific studies have been done on such foods, but the few that were conducted suggest that they are extremely harmful. One study found that laboratory rats fed whole grains lived throughout the period of the study, which was a year. Rats that were fed puffed grains died within two weeks!

Flour Products

One subject related to grains that is seldom discussed is the difference between whole grains and flour products. There are very big differences in freshness and other factors.

Oxidation and Freshness

If you cut an apple, it oxidizes and quickly turns brown. The same happens when grains are cut, rolled, or ground into flour. They oxidize and deteriorate in quality, except that the process is much slower and therefore not obvious to the naked eye.
So even the "fresh bread" that you buy might have been made with flour that was produced months ago. It is not as fresh as you think. With dried pasta and noodles, they could have been made with old flour and then further stored for another few months to over a year.

Production Methods

The way flour is produced also makes a difference. Using a stone mill is a gentler way that grinds the flour at ambient temperature, as opposed to steel mills, which generate a lot of heat when grinding flour with steel blades. The high heat can destroy some nutrients or at least alter their quality. It also pre-cooks the flour. So when you buy flour, look for "stone ground".

Chemical Additives

When buying refined white flour, another word to look for is "unbleached." White flour is not really white, but slightly yellow or beige. Those that appear pure white would have been bleached, usually with chlorine gas (which is highly toxic) or with benzoyl peroxide (a toxic chemical used in acne medicine, hair dyes, etc). In the European Union, bleaching agents are banned!

Besides bleaching agents, flours may also contain maturing agents, dough improvers, and various other chemical additives to improve their baking qualities. More than 20 chemical additives may be present, and the majority are not required by law to be listed.

Choosing the Right Flour Products

So you don't really know what you are getting with your flour products. Best to stick to those that are organic, natural, and produced by small companies that care about product quality and health. Better yet, eat mainly whole grains and minimize your consumption of flour products.