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For there to be comparability, consistency and credibility among whole grain research and regulation, there need to be agreed standard measures for estimating the whole grain content of foods. New technologies may enable rapid measurement of whole grain content, and the development of such techniques should go hand in hand with efforts to define regulations around labeling whole grain foods. There also needs to be greater information availability and transparency around whole grain content in foods. For example, the reporting of whole grain content in national food composition databases would greatly enhance the ability to make better estimates of the whole grain content of different food categories. The Swedish Food Composition Database includes “whole grain” as one of the composition variables, reported on a percentage of dry‐weight basis, while the USDA has also recently included coding to capture foods that contain more than 50% whole grains (reported as “ounce equivalents”). The Oldways Whole Grains Council, with a large database of whole grain content of thousands of foods, can also provide publicly available data to researchers. Although these different approaches highlight the issues around standardization of reporting, it is positive that there are moves to make information about the whole grain content of foods readily available.

As part of efforts to improve reporting standards, scientific journals must clearly state that measurements of whole grain intake must meet recommended criteria. The recommended criteria, of course, need to be defined and agreed upon, and this only underlines the urgency of doing so.

Accurate estimation of whole grain intake is at the core of strong, science‐based recommendations for whole grains, and for there to be accurate estimation, there needs to be clear and reliable information about the whole grain content of foods that is consistently applied by scientists when doing research on whole grains. Further, clear information about whole grain foods will lead to standardized reporting of whole grain content on food packaging,⁽¹⁾ making it easier for consumers to compare products based on whole grain content.