WASHINGTON – For the first time, the federal government on Wednesday issued an official definition of whole-grain foods. The long-awaited nutritional guidance is designed to help consumers sort through a confusing – and sometimes misleading – array of foods that purport to contain whole grains but often do not.
Federal Dietary Guidelines issued last year recommend that Americans eat at least three 1-ounce servings of whole grains daily, as they are proven to help cut heart disease and cancer risk. But until now, there has been no official definition of whole grains and no easy way for consumers to know that cracked wheat, stone-ground wheat, ordinary wheat flour and many other seemingly whole-grain ingredients are not the real thing.
“That’s the problem,” said Bonnie Liebman, nutrition director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy group. “Many of these foods have a mixture of whole and refined grains. You may be eating three times as much of the refined grains as the whole grains.”
Under the draft guidelines issued Wednesday by the Food and Drug Administration, whole-grain foods should contain the three key ingredients of cereal grains: bran (the fiber-filled outer part of the kernel), endosperm (the inner part and usually all that is left in most processed grains) and the germ (the heart of the grain kernel.) Plus, these three ingredients need to be present in the same relative proportion as they exist naturally – a way to be sure that manufacturers do not add back small amounts of each ingredient to highly processed food and then call it whole grain.
While the guidelines are aimed at food companies, “it’s also very important for consumers to have consistent and uniform terminology for what consists of a whole grain,” said Barbara Schneeman, director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.
The new definition is only a recommendation and is not legally enforceable, except where specific FDA regulatory or statutes already exist, Schneeman said.
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