Why I'm an Anti Food Faddist, Wholegrains and #aGrainofTruth

If I have to hear or read the word ‘paleo’ again, I’m going to scream!

Is it just my age and the fact that I’ve seen so many food fads come and go? I’m so old I can remember my Mum being on the F-Plan diet in the 70’s.

Or maybe I just rebel when it seems loads of people are following the latest trend?

Why I’m an anti-food faddist

I’ve gone down some weird dietary paths in the past, mainly when I was hyperactive after my son was diagnosed with ASD.

I put that poor boy on so many diets… and I was silly and often didn’t really know whether they were helping or not….  the placebo effect in huge in autism… I made my life very difficult and he wasn’t impressed either.

These days, I’m happy to make healthy grub like the lemon and coconut balls recipe on this blog. But I worry about all the food fads that spring up, like being 100% sugar free or going deeply paleo.

We all know that wholesome, fresh food from nearby farmers is the best that we can do for families. But sometimes it just has to be Pizza Hut – doesn’t it?

Here’s why I worry about food fads like paleo diets:

I think they feed into anxiety and perfectionism

Perfectionism is the enemy of family life

There’s a lot of marketing put into these fads because some people make heaps of cash

Novelty is always appealing  but not always wise

Balance in life is best

Also…. it would be a catastrophe to say go to Paris and not eat croissants for breakfast

 Look, I’m not saying I eat multiple bowls of pasta for dinner, and lunch on 15 slices of bread… far from it… I aim to eat smart carbs with low GI and to be balanced.

Dr Joanna Macmillan, nutition guru and fellow Scot

Smart Carbs and Grains of Truth

Last week, I made the  sloppy joes our American au pair taught us to make. I slopped the sloppy joes onto soft white rolls, the kids were thrilled.  We very rarely buy white bread even though my little darlings wish I did all the time.

But my mum gave us brown bread when myself and my brothers and sister were little and I just do the same.

I’m not a purist (who would ever give up croissants and baguettes completely?) but we’re mainly brown bread eaters.

Why Wholemeal?

One of the reasons I buy wholemeal is that I know it has more protein in it than white bread. The one we mainly use has 10g of protein per two-slice serve.

Kids need 1g of protein per kilo, so lets say for my twins that’s about 25 – 30g a day they need.

So 10g from a sandwich is a great start.

I recently bought some Burgen – very grainy – and it has 12g of protein in two small slices. How do they do that?

And I love that it’s plant protein because I’m keen to save this one planet we have and plant protein is much easier on the planet than animal protein.

 The browner the bread, the more the fibre in it too… and we all need more fibre in our diets…. getting the kids to eat baked beans for breakfast sometimes if one of my tactics.

Anyway, I thought I knew everything there was to know about bread… but pride came before a fall. I went along to a blogger information session at Tip Top Bakeries recently and found out quite a few new facts.

A bunch of bloggers were shown bread making from woe to go

I’d never twigged, for example, that some breads which have wholegrains are made with white flour and then some wholegrains are added – duh!  And I hadn’t realised that the best of the best breads are made with wholemeal flour and then have wholegrains added. Double duh!

The point was also made that white bread isn’t the baddie that some food faddists would have us believe. Good news, excuse me whilst I nip out for a large baguette.

White bread and white flour still do contain B vitamins, fibre and protein. There’s much more nutrition in white flour than there is say in coconut flour.

Playing with dough at Tip Top

Whole wheat, ready to be milled

This is milled wholemeal flour

White flour, with the bran that’s removed

Ways To Get More Wholegrains In The Family

I often substitute wholemeal flour for white flour in my recipes for cakes and biscuits.

We eat quite a bit of the Barilla wholemeal pasta, 50% of the flour used is wholegrain. You need to eat it with plenty sauce though, it didn’t work well in my pasta an chickpeas recipe.

We use wholemeal wraps

Oats make the best breakfast – I was brought up in Bonnie Scotland, what can I say?

I don’t often buy heavily processed cereals, but Weetbix is generally on offer. The kids are overjoyed if we buy Nutrigrain in the holidays – sigh.

That’s the aim of my dietary efforts… but what can I say? We also have takeaway pizza most weeks at some point…. it’s a balance.

Freshly baked bread – pass me the butter and ginger marmalade

I was a guest of Tip Top Bakeries and the Grain and Legumes Nutrition Council and enjoyed hearing Dr Joanna McMillan chat about smart carbs and practical food choices.

They’ve teamed up to create the new website A Grain Of Truth which has videos, recipes and info about bread. Lunch was, you’ve guessed it, sandwiches filled with delicious, nutritious fillings… which made me realise I am the world’s worst sandwich maker.

Anyway, I really enjoyed the visit and chatting to some experts. Also, blethering to Dr Joanna about our childhoods in rural Scotland and how we now have very Aussie kids was splendiferous.

And yes, I’ve since tried using wholemeal flour in my coronary-inducing death by) white chocolate mud cake, and the kids still scoffed the lot.

Are you a balanced eater?

Or a dedicated food faddist?

Cheers