They're not the Same

I was at a client's house the other and she had her groceries out. I thought, "Good. This is the time to really see what she thinks good nutrition is." It was time to do a little label reading and get her to understand what some good foods really are. For the most part she had done a pretty good job, with the exception of the Skippy peanut butter and Special K bars. There were lots of green vegetables, some fruit, almonds and plain yogurt. Then she showed me the bread, which was whole grain bread. "Go feed that to the birds", I said. "But it's whole grain. Isn't this what you told me get?". No, I didn't. I said whole wheat.

Whole grain and whole wheat are not the same thing. But a lot of people think they are. After taking a look a look at the ingredients I got my client to understand they are not the same thing. The first ingredient should be whole wheat flour. In this case it was unbleached wheat flour. Also, each slice contained only 1 gram of fiber. The minimum that a slice should contain is 2 grams.

So next time you're shopping for bread, do a couple of things. One, make sure it is whole wheat, not just whole grain. Two, make sure whole wheat flour is the first ingredient, not wheat flour, enriched wheat or what ever else is thrown in there. And three, look for a high fiber bread. One that contains at least 2 grams of fiber per slice.