Читать книгу Whole Grains and Health - Группа авторов - Страница 37

Worldwide, dietary recommendations are given for increasing the intake of whole grain to improve health and well‐being. There has been a strong international trend to develop and market whole grain foods; however, it has been difficult to obtain reliable and required information for selecting the most desirable products from a nutritional point of view. Even if an increasing number of consumers are well aware that whole grain foods are healthy, they are less informed about the nutritional differences in composition between cereals as well as pseudocereals. In Western populations, whole grain intake comes mainly from wheat, oats, rye, barley and corn. The estimated health risk reductions observed for whole grain in existing studies are therefore most likely due to intake of these particular cereals. It is well known that large regional differences exist in types of grains eaten both within and between countries although reliable and exact information on this intake is scarce (Kyrø et al. 2014). In order to provide consumers with appropriate dietary advices and to give the industry the opportunity to develop and market innovative and healthy foods, well‐defined definitions not only of whole grain but also of whole grain foods are needed. This will help authorities to encourage the producers (industries) to label foods with correct and understandable amounts of whole grain. A common definition of whole grain foods is also important as international research and trade with foods are increasing.

Whole grain cereals are major sources of dietary carbohydrate and protein as well as containing high amounts of a variety of dietary fibres, minerals, vitamins and other bioactive components (Fardet 2010; Andersson et al. 2014). The latter components are mainly present in the outer parts of the grain or in the germ and are therefore removed to a large extent during extraction of sifted flours. As a result, health authorities in many countries are recommending exchanging the sifted flours with whole grain flours. However, evidence‐based recommendations on the exact amounts and types of whole grains to be consumed are still lacking.

Questions that ought to be raised in this context are therefore: Do consumers know what is meant by whole grain? Do they know which grains are included in this group? Are all whole grains or whole grain foods the same when it comes to nutritional content and health effects?