Written by
on Wednesday, 22 August 2018.
Tagged: carbohydrates, carbs, healthy eating, healthy lifestyle, nutrition, wheat
While wheat is fabulous at making soft breads and being extruded into pasta and noodles, it has come to dominate our daily diet in ways we don’t realise. Here’s how you can shift the emphasis off wheat and get more rye, barley, rice and buckwheat in.
I love wheat - as a grain, flour, kibble or dough. It is so versatile.
It can be milled and made into many diverse foods such as bread, crumpets, pizza, burger buns, pies, pastries, pasta, noodles, couscous and breakfast cereal.
Having worked at the Bread Research Institute where I saw the whole chain from growing to milling and baking, I know there’s very few things that wheat can’t do. And that’s part of the problem. There’s such a wide and diverse range, that most of us don’t realise how much we eat of it.
For example, if you eat a breakfast of wheat flakes or wheat biscuits, then a sandwich for lunch, followed by a pasta dinner, you’re eating wheat, wheat and wheat.
Yes, wheat is a wonderful and versatile grain but we may be eating too much of it.
Wheat has replaced the other older grains of rye and barley which once dominated Europe. These were overtaken by wheat in the 18th and 19th centuries as they didn’t have wheat’s unique gluten which gave it a special capacity to be baked into well-risen and light bread.
Lots has been written about barley and rye in history and this is not the place to talk about them more. Just keep in mind that barley was once the main grain of Europe but is now mainly grown for beer brewing where it is malted and produces a superior malt to wheat.
Rye, however, has survived in colder parts of Europe such as Scandinavia and Eastern Europe (Russia, Poland, Germany) where wheat is difficult to grow.
Don’t overlook the fact that we need a variety of different grains in our diet. We expect to eat a variety of various vegetables and fruit (think of “Eat by the rainbow” and similar slogans), so why not in grains? Here’s how I would swap out the wheat and swap in the grain alternatives.
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