![\"\"](\"http:\/\/i722.photobucket.com\/albums\/ww230\/mcolletterogers\/Brown_Rice_Sunny_JPG.jpg\" "\\"White")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I’ve been noticing a strange thing:\u00a0 Magazines and cookbooks in the “health” category frequently feature recipes calling for refined white grains rather than whole grains.<\/p>\n
Here’s an example from just last week.\u00a0 A well-known health magazine has four cooking features. \u00a0In three of the four, the carb of choice is a white one:<\/p>\n
Why this half-hearted embrace of whole grains?\u00a0 Eating quality grains is no less than one of the four main pillars of healthy eating.\u00a0 How can it be so routinely ignored?<\/p>\n
\n
\n
It’s not like we don’t need help getting whole grains into our diets.\u00a0 Women aged 31-50 would need to increase<\/em> whole grain consumption by over 250% and decrease<\/em> refined grain consumption by 50% to meet the 2005 Dietary Guidelines for whole grains, which only require that three of our six daily grain servings be whole.\u00a0 (Men have even more work to do!)<\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n In real life, these statistics play out like this:\u00a0 A super fit body builder buys boxes of white flour crackers at Costco, even though she is a model of healthy eating in every other way.\u00a0 An energetic mom serves her family only lean beef, chicken and fish but rounds out the weekly meal lineup with a couple big white pasta dishes.\u00a0 Or a trim 50-something guy likes to go light at night, so he orders a virtuous vegetarian sandwich–on a white baguette.<\/p>\n What makes it so darn hard to eat whole grains?\u00a0 It’s not like we’re being asked to eat alien-sounding stuff like kohlrabi, kale or rutabegas.\u00a0 Nor are we being asked to stop eating carbs altogether.\u00a0 We’re simply being asked to eat whole grain versions of our white favorites.<\/p>\n Here are some theories about what makes the whole grain shift so challenging:<\/p>\n While all five theories are helpful, to my mind, the comfort one gets to the real heart of the problem. \u00a0 Think about it:\u00a0 White foods and comfort go together like grilled cheese sandwiches and Campbell’s Tomato Soup.\u00a0 The star of every birthday party:\u00a0 A white flour cake.\u00a0 The highlight of practically every great kid get-together:\u00a0 Hot, fragrant, white flour pizza.\u00a0 The sure fire remedy for all that ails:\u00a0 Chicken noodle soup or mac ‘n cheese, your choice.<\/p>\n Searching back through my fondest childhood memories, I invariably melt into visions of the fluffy white pancakes my mother made us every Friday morning before school.\u00a0 No doubt most of us would find many of our fondest memories inextricably wrapped in white stuff, from Thanksgiving pumpkin pies, Christmas strudels and the Sabbath’s challah to graduation cakes, wedding cakes and mom’s lasagna.<\/p>\n So it’s no surprise when some health nut wants to put your grandma’s marinara on whole wheat noodles and you reply, “No way!”\u00a0 My Jewish neighbor put it this way when asked about whole wheat challah.\u00a0 “It can<\/em> be done,” she said, “but . . . well, you know. . . .”\u00a0 I think we probably all know that it’s tough to wedge whole wheat into our comforting food memories.<\/p>\n Mess with comfort foods and memories and you mess in dangerous territory.<\/p>\n If there’s truth in this theory, then it might not matter whether we know the importance of whole grains, or feel perfectly knowledgeable about where to buy whole wheat flour and how to use it.\u00a0 Our desire for comfort is going to trump any whole grain virtue we can muster.<\/p>\n What do you think?\u00a0 Do you struggle to get three out of six whole grain servings each day?\u00a0 Have you thought about what makes it so challenging?\u00a0 Share your ideas and I’ll share them in the next newsletter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Why do we give whole grains such a half-hearted embrace? Eating quality grains is no less than one of the four main pillars of healthy eating, yet it is routinely ignored. Maybe a comfort connection explains why it’s so hard saying good-bye to white. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1,29],"tags":[83,125,255,281,284,650],"class_list":["post-545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-what-is-healthy-eating","category-uncategorized","category-weight-loss","tag-brown-rice","tag-comfort-foods","tag-good-nutrition","tag-health-magazines","tag-healthy-eating","tag-whole-grains","masonry-post","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n