When
I was young, no one sold breakfast cereals by talking about grains. They talked
about taste (sweetness), about exciting new shapes, about nutritional fortification,
and also drove children to a frenzy collecting useless trinkets inside their
favourite cereal boxes.
After
the Smurfs and hero figures, came the next great marketing idea – wholegrain.
This genius description was in part derived from the medically endorsed advice
to increase fibre intake, which captured the imagination of the bowel movement
obsessed middle classes. My father was either so afraid of or so enraptured by
this craze that he used to sprinkle bran onto almost everything he ate.
Where
did this word come from? What does it mean? At a food show not so long ago I
met a very self satisfied marketing man who professed to have invented the
introduction of the term ‘wholegrain’. Older and wiser, I held myself back from
physical violence, and sated my frustration with a rant, which is much more
entertaining.
Wholegrain.
It’s a catch all feel good title that allows big and not so big food to create
an umbrella of wholesomeness for all their cereal based foods, no matter how
refined, sweetened and processed they are. When it says wholegrain that means
the whole grain is in it, right? Well yes…that’s what they started with. And in
theory as long as they don’t discard any of the grain, then they can sustain
the claim on the pack. What they don’t talk about is what they subject the
wholegrain to in order to make their biscuits of wheat, their pillows of oats,
their big bran flakes and their bizarrely perfect shaped corn flakes.
Strangely
enough loops, pillows and massive flakes are not natural, and cannot be
produced by simply pressing a grain between rollers…you make these unnatural
shapes with an extruder. An extruder is a fearsome machine – very big, very
complex and very heavy duty – as in one end you feed in a mush of refined (ground
up) (whole)grains or mix of refined (whole)grains and other ingredients which
is then rammed into a shaping chamber under immense pressure (which generates
fierce heat, destroying nutrients), before being released to atmosphere through
a shaping die, when it is then miraculously transformed into a supersize flake or pillow,
or loop. If you are very clever you can also squirt a mush of refined milk
solids flavoured with cocoa and some hazelnut flavour (and more sugar) inside a
pillow and hey presto, you’ve just made a best selling wholegrain cereal. Ah,
did I forget? You can then take these extruded wholegrain shapes and tumble
them inside a big stainless steel drum, spraying them with sugars and flavours
so you get a flavoursome wholegrain bite with every mouthful.
Industrial
wholegrain. How do you like it? I don’t, and here at Rude Health we have no
intention of spoiling the natural energy and nutrients inside the wholegrain
with such invasive processes. We will not use extrusion or highly refined
ingredients. Take our Spelt Flakes for instance. One spelt grain equals one
flake. All we do is steam, roll and dry the spelt grains. The Oatmeal?
Stabilise (steam) the oat grain, and then cut it with stainless steel
blades/crush it a little in a roller. You could make these foods in your
kitchen. Simple. In this way all our grains are truly wholegrain.
