We want the 'Whole' Thing

I am still working on carrying over my old blog to this blog - here is one of my carry over entries. 

Whole Wheat is a Mormon mantra. We store it. We grind it. We cook with it. At least that's the hope or why else would our garages be full of it :) Wheat stores incredibly well in it's grain form. They actually had grains of wheat in the pyramids in Egypt that they planted and grew wheat from. Incredible grain. Unfortunately the modern world has processed it into a white, fine powder and has taken away most of its nutrition so it ends up being mostly starch. If you are looking for truly whole wheat bread you either have to make it yourself or it has to have the words 'whole' or 'sprouted' or 'malted' before the word wheat to let you know that the whole wheat has been used. It also needs to be the first ingredient.

So what does it do for me? Well whole grains will digest slower than the processed stuff so it stays with you longer and it helps to regulate your blood sugar (no spiking with whole grains). Since it has bulk it helps with those that are 'intestinal challenged' or have diverticulitis. It has been shown that is may help with DNA damage (that's the B vitamins in it) and in suppressing cancer cell growth (I just quoted this out of the 'Food for Thought' book). Part of that is tied up in Ligans (same stuff that is in Flax). They think it may help suppress hormonally motivated cancers (like mine).

So how do I eat whole grains? Well as bread or in toast (with butter - I can't have margarine since it is made from Soy oils), in cracked wheat cereal (been doing some experimenting with this), in pastas, brown rice, barley, etc. There are some brown rice cereals on the market (Bob Redmill farina, comes to mind). All good.

I need to make sure and read my label for my bread, even though it's multi grain they say you still have to be careful that they are using the whole grain. More stuff to worry about.

Oh, well.  Enjoy!