Healthy Living on a Budget: Whole Grains in Our Pantry

Now that I know why I need to be eating whole grains versus white refined flour, it is time to do something about it! I never realized how little nutrition was in what we were eating until I started reading the labels. Fewer products than I would have liked in our pantry started with “whole wheat” or “whole grain” on the list of ingredients, despite what the packaging said.

Product ingredients are listed in order of quantity, so the first item listed is found in the greatest quantity in a product.  For example, if whole grain is the first ingredient it is the most prominent in that product. However, a label may be misleading in that it might claim “whole wheat”, but that ingredient is listed further down on the list.

So, on my next trip to the grocery store I began looking for products that listed “whole wheat” or “whole grain” as the primary ingredient listed.  The foods I began with were:

• bread
• pasta
• crackers
• rice

I picked these items first because they are high-volume foods in our diet and there are lots of coupons to match with a sale! One example of that is crackers.  I have kids and they are perfect for a quick snack.  I ended up cutting out almost all crackers except for Triscuits – yes for us that included Cheese-Its, Goldfish and the like.  Triscuits were one of the only brands I could find that had few ingredients and had whole grains at the top of the list. Most other brands contained high fructose corn syrup, artificial colors and hydrogenated oils.  But, we will talk more about those later!

So, what have you eliminated or added to your pantry to incorporate more whole grains?

::  Be sure to checkout more articles in my Healthy Living on a Budget Series. Stay tuned, I”ll be talking about my fresh milled grain very soon!