Identifying Wholegrains
Good sources of whole grains.
Wholegrain breakfast cereals, wholegrain breads and wholemeal pasta are all great sources of wholegrains. The key to eating wholegrains is being able to identify which of these products are wholegrain and which are refined grains – this can be done most easily by reading the label.
Label reading made easy.
When choosing wholegrain-based foods, look for the following words in the ingredient list:
- wholegrain
- whole wheat
- popcorn
- stone ground grains
- brown rice
- barley
- oats
- rye
- amaranth
- buckwheat
- millet
- quinoa
- sorghum
- teff
- triticale
- whole wheat, includes varieties such as spelt, emmer, farro, einkorn, Kamut®, durum and forms such as bulgur, cracked wheat and wheatberries.
If any of these ingredients appear first on the list of ingredients it is indicative that the product contains high levels of wholegrains, as the ingredient list is ordered from highest concentration to lowest. Some products will declare the percentage of wholegrains on the packaging, usually in the ingredients list.
When choosing breakfast cereals look for ingredients listed as; whole wheat biscuits, whole wheat flakes, muesli or porridge.
Other foods to look for include wholemeal breads instead of white bread, wholegrain pasta, or use wholemeal flour in baking.
Try to have one wholegrain food at each meal.
For breakfast you could have a wholegrain cereal like Weet-Bix or Museli.
For lunch you could use wholemeal or multigrain bread or wholegrain crispbread. Or you could have a salad based on corn, wholemeal pasta or brown rice.
For dinner you might like to try adding unpearled barley to soups, stews and casseroles. Or you could have a cob of corn and use wholemeal flour in your baking.