Wholegrains role in health
Wholegrains are known to many of you as cereals that are edible seeds of plants. Wheat, oats and rice are the most commonly eaten grain along with rye, barley and corn. As of late more people are introducing quinoa and buckwheat.
Wholegrains are low in fat and are important sources of protein, deietary fibre, vitamins (vit B-group and E), minerals (magnesium, zinc) and phytochemicals. They are a must in a healthy diet as they play a huge role in disease protection.
If you include two-three serves per day it can reduce the risk of developing chronic disease – including cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes and some cancers.
You can lower your BMI, waist circumference and the risk of being overweight. It helps in weight loss and maintaining weight reduction.
The more serves you eat regularly each day will help the health risk more, such as lowering cholesterol and lowering cholesterol drug use if you need them currently.
Changing from white rice to brown rice and white bread to wholemeal bread will definitely help lower blood pressure.
Eating wholegrains with high fibre can protect against colorectal cancers and gastric cancers. As the roughage of these cereals do help with the flushing of these through your digestive tract, preventing build up and therefore could lead to cancers.
An average daily serve of wholegrains per adult should be 48g.
So try to incorporate some chances within your current diet if you haven’t already by adding these serves of popular foods:-
Brown rice (1/2 cup cooked) 30g
Natural muesli (1/2 cup) 30-40g
Porridge (1/3 cup raw oats) 30g
Wholemeal bread (2 slices) 30-40g
Mulitgrain bread (2 slices) 10-30g
Plain popcorn (20g) 15g
