GREAT GRAINS Experts offer new rules

Whole grains are gaining favor as the government ponders a pyramid change.
By JENNIFER MANN
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- White bread, a mainstay of the American diet since at least the 1930s, is under attack.
The Department of Agriculture is considering a recommendation that consumers drastically cut consumption of fortified grains, which are used to enrich a wide variety of food products -- particularly white bread.
Food industry experts say such a move, which would alter the recommended dietary food pyramid, could send a seismic shock through eating patterns, the economics of the food chain and businesses here in America's bread basket.
The refined grains sector already has been battered by the wildfire popularity of low-carbohydrate diets. More recently, white bread came under additional fire from a study released by Tufts University in Boston that links the consumption of such bread to wider waistlines.
"First it was the diet crazies, then within the nutritionist community you have the whole-grain zealots and now you have the dietary guidelines committee," said Josh Sosland of Sosland Publishing and BakingBusiness.com, with headquarters in Kansas City. "It's a nonstop drumbeat."
Revision in progress
The recommendation pertaining to cutting back on enriched grains comes from the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, which is participating in the Agriculture Department's process of revising the food pyramid. The pyramid came into being in 1992.
As it now stands, the base of the food pyramid calls for 6 to 11 servings daily of bread, cereal, rice and pasta.
Eric Hentges, who leads the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, said recently that the issue of recommending people cut back on fortified grains is offset by the notion that they should increase the consumption of whole grains.
The recommendation being bandied about calls for men to cut back on enriched grains by 51 percent and adult women to cut back by 39 percent.
"It's an issue of balance," said Hentges, who stressed that his department has not put forth any formal recommendations.
However, two professors at the Harvard School of Public Health, Walter Willett and Meir Stampfer, in 2002 came up with what they say is a healthier pyramid.
In their prototype, the base of the pyramid is daily exercise and weight control. And while the Agriculture Department's pyramid is fairly simplistic, the one from Willett and Stampfer is more complex, comprised of 11 elements, compared with six for the government's .
The next widest part of the Harvard pyramid is divided equally between whole-grain foods and plant oils, including olive, canola and peanut oils with recommendations that they be consumed at most meals.
Plenty of veggies
Next comes vegetables, which are recommended "in abundance," while the suggested number of daily servings of fruit is two to three.
The next level is comprised of nuts and legumes with a recommended one to three servings a day, then fish, poultry and eggs with 0 to 2 servings a day. The next level up has dairy or calcium supplements at one to two servings. It also suggests multivitamins "for most people." Topping off the tip of the proposed pyramid are red meat, butter, white rice, white bread, potatoes, pasta and sweets, which are to be consumed sparingly.
Nicholas Pyle, president of the Independent Bakers Association, which represents small and medium-sized baking companies, including many family-owned ones, said he hasn't seen any published recommendations.
He said, however, that some of his members are concerned, although perhaps he said not as much as those at large baking companies such as Interstate.
"Our members are more readily able to adapt and develop new products than the big guys," Pyle said.
"But certainly bread, and white bread in particular, has become a very convenient bashing point as this country talks about the obesity issue."
More nutrients
The government mandated fortification of certain foods beginning in the early 1940s, when it was conscripting men to fight in World War II and many were found to have vitamin deficiencies.
The program worked. Prior to the enrichment of certain foods there were 300,000 cases of pellagra, a niacin deficiency. The enrichment program has virtually eliminated pellagra.
Further, the government started requiring the addition of folic acid to certain products in the early 1990s, which has helped to reduce cases of spina bifida by 25 percent.
Sosland said the fortified grains decision would have far-reaching implications, including for the wheat-growing industry.
He noted that per capita consumption of flour in the U.S. has already dropped from 146 pounds in 2000 to 136 in 2003.
Sosland also noted that it takes 1.8 bushels of wheat to make 100 pounds of whole wheat flour, while it takes 2.4 bushels to make the same amount of white flour.
If everyone shifted to whole wheat and whole grain products, it would in theory drastically reduce the demand for wheat.
From his perspective, Sosland said he doesn't think that the baking industry yet realizes what sort of implications a drastic recommendation from the Agriculture Department could have on its industry and ancillary ones.
"In a war and in a fortress there are a number of walls that the enemy needs to breach," Sosland said.
"And I don't think that people are picking up that another major wall or fortification has been breached."