Question for nutrition experts: Grains, good or bad?

I'm not a nutrition expert, but I eat grains! I think we just don't prepare them properly. For example, wheat bread should be properly fermented in a yeast bread. Or sprouted. Or toasted. These processes make the grain more digestible, and in the case of fermenting, also makes them more nutritious (complete protein, more vitamins).
I am NOT into the idea that we should not eat grains or sugars. Nonsense.

I prefer my sprouted fermented grains in craft beer :drinker: :drinker: :drinker:

Sounds interesting, I wish I liked beer, but I never have developed a taste for it!
The fermenting I am referring to is the fermentation by yeast that occurs when you are making a loaf of WHOLE wheat bread. If it is allowed to rise (proof, ferment) for an adequate amount of time, the minerals in the grain are made bio-available, there's a full complement of b-vitamins (including pantothenic acid, an anti-aging b-vitamin), and is a complete protein.

No offence - but that is how all yeast bread is made, including sour dough - that's just a non-domesticated yeast, a rebel if you will. And..... wait for it...unfiltered beer is full of b-vitamins and other minerals depending on the style. Grain in and of itself is not a complete protein - it has amino acids - but needs a partner such as a legume for them both to contain all of the essential amino acids and become a complete protein. Also - yeast and wheat flour alone is a very inefficient method of converting bready goodness. Beer grains - typically barley, are sprouted first to start the enzyme process, and then put through a mash process (held at certain temps) in order to convert the grain's starches to sugars for fermentation. Otherwise your bread would become full of alcohol - because that is what yeast does - It converts sugars to alcohol and produces c02 which makes your bread rise.

There is a company where I live called Silver Hills Bakery that makes sprouted grain bread - pretty tasty, but boring after a while.

oh - and you just haven't tried the right beer yet - if you like fruit try a raspberry wheat ale - if you prefer a clean taste - try a german lager or czech pilsner - if you like bananas - maybe a hefeweizen :drinker:

I'm not a nutrition expert, but I eat grains! I think we just don't prepare them properly. For example, wheat bread should be properly fermented in a yeast bread. Or sprouted. Or toasted. These processes make the grain more digestible, and in the case of fermenting, also makes them more nutritious (complete protein, more vitamins).
I am NOT into the idea that we should not eat grains or sugars. Nonsense.

I prefer my sprouted fermented grains in craft beer :drinker: :drinker: :drinker:

Sounds interesting, I wish I liked beer, but I never have developed a taste for it!
The fermenting I am referring to is the fermentation by yeast that occurs when you are making a loaf of WHOLE wheat bread. If it is allowed to rise (proof, ferment) for an adequate amount of time, the minerals in the grain are made bio-available, there's a full complement of b-vitamins (including pantothenic acid, an anti-aging b-vitamin), and is a complete protein.

No offence - but that is how all yeast bread is made, including sour dough - that's just a non-domesticated yeast, a rebel if you will. And..... wait for it...unfiltered beer is full of b-vitamins and other minerals depending on the style. Grain in and of itself is not a complete protein - it has amino acids - but needs a partner such as a legume for them both to contain all of the essential amino acids and become a complete protein. Also - yeast and wheat flour alone is a very inefficient method of converting bready goodness. Beer grains - typically barley, are sprouted first to start the enzyme process, and then put through a mash process (held at certain temps) in order to convert the grain's starches to sugars for fermentation. Otherwise your bread would become full of alcohol - because that is what yeast does - It converts sugars to alcohol and produces c02 which makes your bread rise.

There is a company where I live called Silver Hills Bakery that makes sprouted grain bread - pretty tasty, but boring after a while.

oh - and you just haven't tried the right beer yet - if you like fruit try a raspberry wheat ale - if you prefer a clean taste - try a german lager or czech pilsner - if you like bananas - maybe a hefeweizen :drinker:

No offense taken.

I did NOT understand what you were talking about : "Also - yeast and wheat flour alone is a very inefficient method of converting bready goodness."

We just did a unit study on bread in our homeschooling, and it was fascinating as well as liberating from all this "don't eat grains" nonsense.
Modern methods of bread-baking like to take shortcuts to mass-produce bread and make it shelf stable. For example, if you knead the dough yourself, you can properly develop the gluten fibers to make a bread that will rise properly. Kneading by hand "untangles" the bread fibers, putting them into the same direction, basically. "Tangled" fibers will break if kneaded by machine, or during the rising process. So commercial breadmakers will use dough conditioners (the un-pronounceable chemicals on the ingredients list) to make the fibers tougher, altering the protein structure of the wheat.
Commercial bakers will decrease the time spent fermenting. But THAT'S NOT GOOD, because time is required for the fermentation process to transform the elements of the wheat into digestible nutrients (like, phosphorus, zinc, CA++, Mg, Fe, Cu). Your gut won't absorb these nutrients from the wheat, w/o proper fermentation of the wheat. Commercial bakers also will also "save" time by fermenting the liquid and yeast separately from the flour, so again, the flour doesn't get fermented for us.

Your supposed to let the bread dough rise a few times, folding the dough and pressing out the accumulated C02 and alcohol that accumulates around the feeding yeast cells. This is how to keep "feeding" the yeast: when the dough gets remixed like this, it moves the yeast into a new position and it keeps on fermenting, or feeding. Otherwise the C02 and alcohol would kill the yeast. So there are supposed to be THREE rising periods, a first and second rising (with a remixing in between), and a "proofing" time, when the formed bread is allowed to rise one more time before baking. The first rising time would take about 90min, the second rising time about 60min and the proofing period would be about 45min. The dough is enzyme active (phytase) the WHOLE time, transforming minerals, and developing a FULL COMPLEMENT of amino acids as well as all the b-vitamins. In fact, there is an increase in B6, B12 and pantothenic acid (anti-aging vitamin).
BAKING the bread removes the C02 and evaporates the alcohol (and kills the yeast, and stops the enzyme activity).

Most or many bread companies are going to FAIL to make a loaf of bread like that, because they want to RUSH the process.
They have to add chemicals to force things to go their own way. I doubt the bread is going to be gut-friendly.
IT'S NO WONDER folks end up with gut problems, then blame it on grain. :ohwell:

We have a grain grinder, I have made plenty of bread (but not lately). Love sprouted grain bread:)
I am a complete newbie in the ale dept....I'll have to try those:drinker:

Evidence that points that grains are not bad? You can't prove a negative, so...

Will you settle for a little deductive reasoning? Humans have been eating grains for hundreds of thousands of years. If grains were 'toxic' in any way, I think we wouldn't have been doing so well as a species.

We are doing well as a species???

I think not. There are higher rates of cancers, tumors and the whole world is becoming obese(except third world countries that hoard their food from the poor)

There are more of us and we are taller than our ancestors because of a better diet (and most people eat grains), so yes, I think we are a successful species. Cancer is not a new invention - ancient peoples died of it too - plenty of them - if they lived long enough. Interestingly, the leading cause of death until the advent of dentistry, was tooth decay.

if you want to get into this question from an evolutionary perspective.... humans are generalists and omnivores when it comes to diet. This means that humans can potentially eat a huge range of different foods and still be healthy. What's important is getting all the nutrients the body needs. Hunter-gatherers typically eat a huge range of different plant and animal foods, which varies according to season. Since agriculture was invented, heavy reliance on one particular staple food led to problems, such as nutritional imbalances due to not having enough variety in the diet and getting too much of specific nutrients, and if your staple crop fails, there's not much else to eat. (note: this isn't an inevitable result of agriculture... plenty of agriculturalist communities have grown/kept a wide range of different crops/livestock and done very well, but some of the health problems of some agriculturalists are attributed to specific foods rather than as being a result of a very narrow diet).

Also, while humans are generalists who can eat a wide variety of different foods, individual variation means that some people are made ill by foods that are totally safe for others. This includes situations where one ethnic group, due to their cultural history, has evolved the ability to digest foods that other ethnic groups can't digest, e.g. the ability to digest lactose in populations descended from traditional dairy farmers/herders.

Humans do better eating a wide variety of foods, and too much of anything in potentially bad (even too much water can kill you). ............So anyway, back to grains, some people are unable to digest some kinds of grains, and/or are allergic to specific things in those grains. Others digest them just fine with no issues. So if grains make you ill, don't eat them. Too much of anything can be bad for anyone, that includes grains. Some people do eat way too much grain based foods, leading to obesity. Grains are calorie dense, so should be eaten in moderation. The "food pyramid" with it's recommendation to eat 6-10 servings of grains a day was designed at a time when most people did manual labour; that amount of grains is fine for a manual labourer or someone who does an equivalent amount of exercise. However, it's way too much for a sedentary person. And of course someone who can't digest grains should find other ways to get enough carbohydrate, and the amount of carbs you eat should be relative to your activity levels.

Evidence that points that grains are not bad? You can't prove a negative, so...

Will you settle for a little deductive reasoning? Humans have been eating grains for hundreds of thousands of years. If grains were 'toxic' in any way, I think we wouldn't have been doing so well as a species.

Hi, first of all, thank you for the post and congratulations on your weight loss goals. Question: Are you able to provide a link or information that confirms, scientifically, that humans have been consuming grains for 100's of thousands of years? I would be very interested in that study for sure. Thank you.

edited for spelling errors (lol, there may be more)

They existed alongside modern humans, so I think it's safe to presume that the Neandertal diet was similar to ours. Here are the published results of a study that examined food stuff lodged between Neandertal teeth. Included were cereal grains.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=grains+neandertal+teeth

^^^^ this

palaeolithic humans were hunter-gatherers or hunter-scavenger-gatherers, that includes eating all the edible plants and parts of plants within their foraging range. That would include eating wild grains, in season. To suggest they systematically avoided a particular kind of food that was within their foraging range is far fetched, and would need to be proved and explained, i.e. why would they systematically avoid a particular food that they could have eaten.

neolithic people didn't *invent* grains. they started cultivating them. mesolithic people stored grains prior to that. this was done because grains are a good "fall back" food, i.e. something to sustain them when preferred foods (e.g. meat, fruits) are not available. There is absolutely no way any early humans started to store and later cultivate foods that they'd never eaten before....

Since you asked for links from reputable sources, here are some:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/patientinstructions/000110.htm
http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Goodfood/Pages/what-is-a-Mediterranean-diet.aspx
http://www.choosemyplate.gov/food-groups/grains-why.html
http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/in-depth/whole-grains/art-20047826?footprints=mine

I did NOT understand what you were talking about : "Also - yeast and wheat flour alone is a very inefficient method of converting bready goodness."

Ah - all I meant was that what yeast does is eat the sugars available to it in dough and in wort (beer before being fermented) and exretes alcohol and co2. That bready smell in the kitchen as bread is rising is actually alcohol from the fermentation (your word) process. I liked your in depth explanation of the kneading process and yes it is the gluten strands getting stronger that traps the co2 and forces the dough to rise. Agree on the "Wonderbread" style of bread out there, but there are plenty of small commercial bakers that follow excellent practices and make wonderful product. We have a chain here in BC called Cob's bread that are bakery franchises and their bread is pretty darn good.

But I'm getting side-tracked - bread yeast and beer yeast are the same animal, just different strains. Where the inefficiency comes in is when beer grains are "mashed" that is held at a certain temperature for a certain period of time - the starches in the grains are converted to sugars that are more readily available to the yeast to do its business. Even then, the most efficent my set up has been so far is 78% conversion. As this doesn't happen with dough - the yeast can only work on the available sugars. In this case the inefficency is a good thing.

I tried an experiment two years ago and made all of the bread my family consumed for a full year. It was a lot of fun, but a lot of work.

Have you tried making sourdough? I don't have much success with it. Either it doesn't rise or it explodes in the oven!

cheers

Interesting, thank-you! Yes, I have the "original" sourdough which I ordered from some club that keeps it going. It is actually really nice. I keep it active in my fridge in a crock. I do make the sourdough, and have nearly always made it using unbleached flour. It's ultra-easy, and tastes fantastic. It's this simple:
In a large bowl, mix 1C sourdough starter, 1C water, 2tsp salt, 3C flour
Simply stir to combine, no kneading required.
Cover with plastic wrap and allow to sit overnight.
Youtube example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POnxAoHl1qc