Grains

This post is part of a series exploring the primary environmental and health issues in a particular food group.



Bread made from Turkey Hard Red Winter Wheat, an heirloom grain on Slow Food's Ark of Taste.


The cultivation of grains can arguably be called the most influential happening in the history of human kind. When the farming of cereals began, so did civilization.

Grains are an important part of a healthy diet, but much of the grain we eat today is in a refined form and heavily processed to offer us little of the nutritional benefits of whole grains. And much of this grain is grown unsustainably, profiting only agribusiness, with the ecosystem, family farmers, and eaters reaping little reward.

The Health Benefits of Whole Grains

Whole grains like whole wheat, rye, barley, spelt, oats, stone ground cornmeal, brown rice, wild rice, quinoa, popcorn, buckwheat, teff and millet support wellness. In their intact form, grains provide carbohydrates, dietary fiber, vitamins, minerals, lignans, phytoestrogens, and phenolic compounds. When the outer bran and inner germ of the grain seed kernel are removed, as in the case of white bread and white rice and the like, we are left with solely the starchy endosperm. Stripped of the rich B vitamins and antioxidants of the germ, and the fiber of the bran, carbohydrate is the primary nutrient left. In refining, the whole grain easily goes from a nutrient dense food to a source of empty calories.

The Dietary Guidelines for American’s recommendation is to “Make half your grains whole.” At least. The DGA’s go on to say, “Consuming at least 3 or more ounce-equivalents of whole grains per day can reduce the risk of several chronic diseases and may help with weight maintenance.” The benefits of whole grains stretch from reduced risk of certain cancers to lowered cholesterol to improved gastrointestinal functioning. Whole grains have been found to reduce the postprandial blood sugar surge and to increase satiety; these effects can aid in improved diabetes control as well as weight control.

The ever popular refined white flour, pasta, rice, cereals, snack foods, and sweets can be eaten without the negative consequences of high blood sugar or chronic weight gain, but the amount of these refined grain we eat as American’s is way too much for our own good and too often is joined by added sugars, fat, and sodium; contributing to higher risk of weight increases, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes. People who choose to eat whole grains at most meals reduce their risk of these problems. Unfortunately, there is confusion about what constitutes a whole grain, so here are some tips to help identify whole grains:

Ø Check the ingredient label as described above: the first ingredient should be a whole grain.

Ø Look for the grams of fiber listed on the Nutrition Facts Label: a good source of whole grains will have a higher fiber content. A good rule of thumb is to look for 3 grams of fiber for each serving, like a one ounce slice of bread.

Ø Watch for the whole grain council label. This is voluntary labeling so while anything with the whole grain stamp will be a source of whole grains, not every whole grain has a stamp.

Ø Buy raw whole grain ingredients from the bulk bins or directly from a farm or mill. Steel cut and rolled oats, whole wheat berries and flour, quinoa, wild rice, or brown rice are all clearly whole grains.

A Step Towards Sustainable Choices

If eating whole grains helps protect your own health, then choosing local and organic whole grains is a step towards protecting the health of the planet.

Locally grown grains can reduce transportation emissions as well as support your local and regional farmers. Organic grains are grown without synthetic fertilizers, herbicides and fungicides, toxic pesticides, sewage sludge, and are not genetically engineered. Both reduced transportation and reduced chemical use helps to reduce toxic runoff into our increasingly susceptible waterways. The run off from the industrial farms of the Midwest drains into the Mississippi River and is one of the major contributors to the notorious “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico—an area the size of New Jersey in which life has basically been suffocated; destroying biodiversity and the livelihood of many of the Gulf’s fishing communities. Closer to home, organic farming allows for more life to flourish on the farm and in nearby ecosystems like birds, bees, and small mammals.

Organic foods, by law, cannot contain any GMO ingredients, which is useful to those consumers looking to avoid GMOs because they are not labeled in this country. GMOs, Genetically Modified Organisms, are defined as “organisms with manipulated genes to introduce new, or alter existing, characteristics, or produce a new protein or enzyme” by Food Processing Technology. The biotech industry promotes GMOs as the answer to just about everything, but especially to feeding the world’s growing population while solving our environmental crises. But there is much reason to be skeptical about the claims of this very controversial industry. Around the world, people are protesting GMOs for environmental, food sovereignty, health, cross contamination concerns, and more.

“Agricultural biotechnology has been promoted as the key tool to combat global hunger and poverty by increasing the productivity of farmers worldwide...The biotechnology industry promised that farmers could increase their yields, lower production costs and reduce agrochemical use. Instead, American farmers have faced higher costs without higher productivity, risked law suits from seed companies, and applied more agrochemicals as weeds and insects have developed resistance to the genetic crop traits.” - Food and Water Watch

While the biotech industry courts favor with high level players interested in solving world hunger, it is important to keep in mind that hunger stems from the inability to afford food, not lack of food in the global supply. While global hunger increases, large agro-companies like Monsanto and Cargill are making record profits. Even the American Dietetic Association, a fairly conservative and industry friendly organization, acknowledges there may be a problem with biotech. While the 2007 ADA Position Paper on Sustainability states, “ADA affirms that food biotechnology has many potentially positive applications,” the paper goes on to say, “genetically engineered seeds present some significant contradictions regarding ecological sustainability.”

The ADA shows no concern over the potential human health impacts of GMO consumption, though certainly there have been cases of novel allergens introduced into foods like corn and kiwi. To date, there are no long-term studies that can show us that the regular consumption of the most commonly eaten GMO foods (corn, soy, canola, and cottonseed oil) is absolutely safe. We will find out someday as most Americans are now eating GMO foods on a daily basis.

At its most basic level, the fundamental problem with biotechnology seems to be that it perpetuates an industrial paradigm that furthers the pollution of our waterways and leaves the soil bereft of nutrients, requiring huge inputs of fertilizer to grow anything at all. This is no way to move forward in the face of climate change in a world of finite resources.

Finding Good Whole Grains

Local sources of grains can be found in much of the U.S. When Milwaukee’s Eat Local Challenge began a few years ago, we sought out local sources of every food we could, but had some difficulty finding local wheat. We found some freshly milled wheat flour in a farm store at the Michael Fields Agricultural Institute, but that required a 45 minute drive from the city—not all that environmentally friendly.

Since that first ELC in 2007, the market for local grains seems to have expanded; now we can buy organic whole wheat flour from Illinois at our local Co-op, we can find rolled oats at our farmers market’s year round, and one of our farmer friends shared a pound of wheat berries he grew in his nearby fields last year. The ability to find one of our region's indigenous foods, wild rice, has expanded as well. A few years back, it seemed you had to know someone, travel “up north” where wild rice grows, or special order it from the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota--where the tribe protects and maintains the sacred wild rice, known as Manoomin in Ojibwe. Now, we can purchase real wild rice from Wisconisn at a local “Trading Post” or the White Earth Wild Rice is now easily from the Outpost Co-op.

Another Great Lakes food tradition is the White Corn tended by the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. Originally from the New York area, tribal members brought Iroquois White Corn with them when they migrated to Wisconsin as their land was taken by colonists. White Corn is eaten primarily as a grain in its dried form (when fresh it’s known as “green corn.”) It is enjoyed in White Corn Soup or as a wheelshaped delicious cornmeal bread, studded with kidney beans, known as Kanastohale. Each year at the Oneida organic farm Tsyunhehkw^, elders, youth and adults come together for the Community Harvest and Husking Bee—a tradition that has been carried on for generations.

Growing your own grain is also a possibility. While wheat, rye, or barley may be a challenge if you do not have much land or a thresher, it’s pretty simple to grow a row of grain corn in your backyard. This past year, partner grew Pennsylvania Dutch Heirloom Corn for popcorn and Hopi Blue Corn for flour. We now have a few quarts of beautiful grey-blue cornmeal, ground on a friend’s borrowed mill attached to their food processor.

Sustainable Nutrition Bottom-line:

Eat whole grains for your own health. Choose organically and locally grown grains for the health of the planet and of future generations. There is a continuum of food choices within any food group: at one end of the Grains continuum, you may find heavily processed foods like snack cakes and white bread and on the other end you may find locally grown, organic oats, homegrown corn, and real wild rice. Though the reasons to choose well are plenty, change does not easily happen overnight; take small steps in the direction you'd like to go. Wherever you are on the continuum, there is room to grow. If you currently eat white bread regularly, consider switching to whole grain bread. If you currently eat whole grain bread, but don’t cook, try making wild rice, brown rice, quinoa, or barley for dinner two or three times this week. If you eat and cook whole grains regularly, it might be time to seek out local sources at your farmers market or on localharvest.org.