Four Weeks to Healthy Eating: Week Two—Adding Whole Grains to your Diet

 Fact: There is almost zero nutritional value in white flour. That’s a little disheartening when you think of how pervasive white flour is in breads, cereals, pastas and restaurant food. Womenfitness.net has a great article called “Ugly Truths About White Flour,” in which the writer explains why white bread is white (bleached like your clothes!), how the benefits of the actual wheat are lost in the process of making white flour and what white flour ultimately does to the body—fattens it up and makes it struggle to work harder during digestion. My personal opinion on white flour: AVOID IT. Whole grains, like barley, brown rice, wild rice, oatmeal, millet and bulgur, haven’t had their bran and germ removed during the refining process so they are definitely better than any refined flours. Our bodies respond well to the fiber offered by bran and germ and so the less of it we get, the less our bodies are able to process and digest food. When that happens, organs like the pancreas have to work harder. (more…)