Most of us enjoy the convenience of buying flour from stores but did you know that unless it is whole wheat, nearly 30 percent of vitamins and minerals have been stipped off. In order for suppliers to keep flour “fresh” natural oils must be removed and along with those go the germ and bran.
In its natural state, each wheat berry is a complete nutritional package. In fact, The Harvard School of Public Health explains: “The bran is the fiber-rich outer layer that supplies B vitamins, iron, copper, zinc, magnesium, antioxidants, and phytochemicals. Phytochemicals are natural chemical compounds in plants that have been researched for their role in disease prevention.
“The germ is the core of the seed where growth occurs; it is rich in healthy fats, vitamin E, B vitamins, phytochemicals, and antioxidants. The endosperm is the interior layer that holds carbohydrates, protein, and small amounts of some B vitamins and minerals.”[1]
Since there is little moisture content in wheat berries, they rarely spoil and by design, wheat berries are programmed by nature to deliver protein, starch (sugar), vitamins, and minerals. Each little grain of wheat is the whole package, storing its goodness and energy until the next planting season. Because of this, most whole grain is stable until it is milled, but it is at that moment the maximum nutrition is released. Whole wheat begins to degrade right then.
As the whole wheat is processed, oils within the seeds are exposed to air, which begins oxidizing these lipids. This leads to rancidity in flour, “as early as 2–14 days subsequently after the milling operation.”[2] This, of course, limits shelf life, so millers learned early on that removing the bran and germ, will keep this from happening. However, on the whole, as wheat’s bran and germ are removed most of the nutrients go with them.
The commercial solution is to refine white flour, which most of us have used happily for years. But during processing most millers remove many of the vitamins and minerals when making white flour. And while refining flour “creates fluffy flour that makes light, airy bread, and pastries, but the process strips away more than half of wheat’s B vitamins, 90 percent of the vitamin E, and virtually all of the fiber. Although some nutrients may be added back by fortification, other health-promoting components of whole grains such as phytochemicals cannot be replaced.”[3]
Since nearly 30 percent of the original grain is gone through the refining process, flour keeps for months, which makes it great for shipping to stores. Then many of us purchase it, we leave it on our own shelves for months or in food storage for years in our basements. Remember that once wheat and other grains are milled, the nutrients are released. Over time these degrade, so the sooner they are used the better the nutrition from them is.
According to Katie Kimbal, with each passing day, important nutrients slip away. These include”
Our 100% organic flour is ground super fine, so it looks and acts like white flour. But in fact, it is chief among high-protein bread flours, coming in at 15%, (the usual range is 10–14 percent). And still, it has all the bran and germ to provide great taste and nutrition.
This truly is whole wheat flour, nothing added, nothing taken away; it is real whole wheat flour.—Martha Levie
- “Unsaturated fats in the wheat germ oxidize/go rancid.
- “B Vitamins are destroyed by light and air.
- “Beneficial enzymes start working and play themselves out.
- “Vitamin A is diminished.
- “Vitamin E, which is an antioxidant that helps to protect flour from oxidation, deteriorates once milled, especially if the conditions become moist.”[4]
Milling your grain at home offers the full benefit of germ, bran, endosperm (the starchy part of wheat kernels), and all the vitamins and minerals that go with it. Whole grains slow digestion because of their high fiber content, this pushes them lower on the glycemic index and makes many more nutrients available during digestion.
“Good nutrition — and the way in which our bodies absorb and process nutrients — is a much bigger puzzle than a nutrient-by-nutrient tally sheet suggests. Most nutrients don’t fly solo: they interact, join forces, cancel each other, jockey for position on metabolic pathways. One reason food is so often nutritionally preferable to pills or supplements is that food contains a mixture of nutrients, so we benefit from their interactions with each mouthful.”[5] And when whole grain is combined with long fermentation, sourdough bread delivers a powerhouse of vitamins and minerals not bio-available in commercially yeasted bread.
Sources
1 The Nutrition Source. “Whole Grains,” Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH)
2 Food for Thought: Is Freshly Milled Flour more Nutritious?” )
3 HSPH, ibid.
4
5 Harvard Health Newsletter, “Nutrition’s dynamic duos,” Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH)
Recent Comments