The words wheat and rice are referring to refined wheat and white rice. These foods are not whole grains like whole wheat and brown rice. What makes them so unhealthy for you is the good stuff was taken out and the unhealthy stuff was left in. It is like taking a person and taking the good out of them and leaving all the evil in them. So when you eat these foods they need to rob your body of the nutrients that were in them originally so you can digest them.



Over time this destroys your health. Then they create all these foods with wheat like pancakes, waffles, french toast, cream of wheat, bread, pasta, muffins, biscuits, soft and hard pretzels, cakes, cookies, crackers, donuts, bagels, blintzes, perogies, lasagna, sandwiches, burgers, pies, pizza and strombolis. Whole wheat and brown rice are whole grains and so are not unhealthy.

The whole wheat is not great for health though, but it is cheap. It is better to use other grains like rye, barley, kamut, spelt, quinoa, millet and wild rice. Wild rice is not a rice. It is the only grain that is native to North America. The wheat and rice is originally with 3 parts. To refine it, they take off the bran. This part of the grain has most of the fiber and is loaded with anti-oxidants that you need. This is then sold in the heath food store. The wheat and rice are sold in the fat and sick food store.

Then they take off the germ and that is sold in the health food store. It has most of the nutrition. Endosperm is the name of this part that is left. Rice endosperm and wheat endosperm are the precise terms for rice and wheat. It is mostly carbohydrates. This is the reason this food can make you sick and fat. Whole wheat may be bland but brown rice tastes as good as white rice. It has a nuttier taste. Many Indians have switched from basmati rice to brown basmati rice.

Near me, there is a Japanese/Chinese restaurant that has 50% of their customers requesting the brown rice instead of the white rice. Cracked wheat is good because it is raw. A good friend of mine loves to cook the grain, quinoa, since it takes only 15 minutes to cook. Instead of cream or wheat, you can buy buckwheat groats and make that as a hot cereal. You can sweeten it with blackstrap molasses or maple syrup. A very healthy grain to cook is amaranth. It takes about 15 minute to cook. Wild rice takes 50 minutes to cook but Trader Joes sells it cooked so you just need to heat it up. Copyright 2008 by Chuck Bluestein