{"id":24522,"date":"2012-03-21T16:49:25","date_gmt":"2012-03-21T16:49:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/?p=24522"},"modified":"2016-12-02T07:56:54","modified_gmt":"2016-12-02T12:56:54","slug":"whole-grain-is-it-all-its-cracked-up-alan-freishtat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/health\/physical-health\/whole-grain-is-it-all-its-cracked-up-alan-freishtat\/","title":{"rendered":"Whole Grain: Is It All It’s Cracked Up to Be?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why in the world would someone take whole wheat grain, crack the grain, pulverize it with rollers, and separate the endosperm from the dark, fibrous bran and the wheat embryo? \u00a0Why would they take out important nutrients, vitamins, unsaturated fats, fiber and magnesium? \u00a0And if intact grains are so healthy, why did we stop eating them and shift to highly refined grains – especially when study after study has shown the ill effects of white, refined grains on our health?<\/p>\n

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Once upon a time, white flour was a luxury food. It was a novelty for the upper classes. Enter rollers in the early 19th century, and everything (grain) changed. It made white flour affordable to the masses, and white flour\u2019s popularity exploded. No longer did the poor need to suffer whole wheat, rye or barley flour. They could have the food of the rich, the \u201cpurified\u201d grain that made breads and cakes lighter, airier and fluffier.<\/p>\n

Buying white flour became a status symbol. It could also survive longer without refrigeration, as all processed foods can. But what\u2019s good for business and sales isn\u2019t necessarily what\u2019s good for our health. Here\u2019s the damage we incurred when the erroneously titled \u201cWonder Bread\u201d became a staple of the American diet.<\/p>\n