Whole grains' content of phenolics

[Burak]

"Despite the differences in fruits', vegetables' and whole grains' content of "free" and "bound" phenolics, the total antioxidant activity in all three types of whole foods is similar, according to Dr. Liu's research. His team measured the antioxidant activity of various foods, assigning each a rating based on a formula (micromoles of vitamin C equivalent per gram). Broccoli and spinach measured 80 and 81, respectively; apple and banana measured 98 and 65; and of the whole grains tested, corn measured 181, whole wheat 77, oats 75, and brown rice 56."

 

This passage is from 

http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=54 

where they explained this in detail. Many CR followers try to stay away from whole grains because of their supposed low nutrient density (or maybe gluten?). However, when I check most of the whole grains in cronometer by providing all 2000 calories from them, I see that except fat soluble vitamins, omega-3 and 1-2 minerals, they are all nutritionally adequate. They also tend to have some trace minerals which can prove beneficial.

 

What do you guys think? Is there any reason why recent popular diets (paleo, ketojenic, nutritarian vs.) demonize whole grains? Maybe they cannot make money out of whole grains since they are cheap, convenient, and nutritionally adequate and big money systematically shifts our caloric intake away from them. 

[mccoy]

"Despite the differences in fruits', vegetables' and whole grains' content of "free" and "bound" phenolics, the total antioxidant activity in all three types of whole foods is similar, according to Dr. Liu's research. His team measured the antioxidant activity of various foods, assigning each a rating based on a formula (micromoles of vitamin C equivalent per gram). Broccoli and spinach measured 80 and 81, respectively; apple and banana measured 98 and 65; and of the whole grains tested, corn measured 181, whole wheat 77, oats 75, and brown rice 56."

 

This passage is from 

http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=54 

where they explained this in detail. Many CR followers try to stay away from whole grains because of their supposed low nutrient density (or maybe gluten?). However, when I check most of the whole grains in cronometer by providing all 2000 calories from them, I see that except fat soluble vitamins, omega-3 and 1-2 minerals, they are all nutritionally adequate. They also tend to have some trace minerals which can prove beneficial.

 

What do you guys think? Is there any reason why recent popular diets (paleo, ketojenic, nutritarian vs.) demonize whole grains? Maybe they cannot make money out of whole grains since they are cheap, convenient, and nutritionally adequate and big money systematically shifts our caloric intake away from them. 

 

Whole, organic cereals are very good. One thing I just noticed is that, since I eat few cereals (probably have a polymorphism which makes it harder to digest them to me), I always have a lesser than RDA intake of niacin. That's one of the benefits of cereals, which are also relatively rich in proteins.

 

Why cereals are demonized:

 

1) Low carbers: their purpose is to minimize serum glucose and insuline. Some of'em guys have T2 diabetes or metabolyc disfunction/obesity and insuline resistance, so the fewer carbs they eat the better it is for them. Such a reasoning though has been extrapolated also to people who are insulin sensitive hence have no reason to minimize carbs. Demonization is the fruit of human ignorance, where the truth that too many carbs are bad has been transformed into the belief that the lesser, the best.

2) Paleos: they are just fixated that cereals give intolerances, even undetected, which cause all manner of illnessess. I read a book where the author believed just about all humanity is cereal-intolerant (without providing hard data). Plus they insist that the Eskimos have an ideal diet, whereas when man started farming and growing cereals all kinds of ailments occurred. I know, it's preposterous but there are people out there who support wholeheartedly such unsubstantiated ideas.

 

3 months ago I experimented a relatively low carb diet because I was convinced that it is good to have as low a serum insulin concentration as possible. But since I'm evidently insulin sensitive, the result was that I started loosing too much weight and abandoned the idea.

[Gordo]

"Is there any reason why recent popular diets (paleo, ketojenic, nutritarian vs.) demonize whole grains?"

 

Remember some from the silly fad diet craze used to demonize all carbs, so just picking on grains may be an improvement ;)

One of the more annoying claims I hear from people is that grains are inflammatory - the opposite is true.  I eat whole grains every day, because of this forum I've diversified more, and now eat buckwheat and rye in addition to barley, oats, flax and wheat.  Anyone else familiar with the card game "Pit"?  ;)  I sprout some grains as well.

[Burak]

I'm speculating right now but one of the other benefits of whole grains can be their high cyctine level. This is not for us but for our little friends, the gut bacteria. Since they also need sulfur containing AA for surviving, the only way they get it is via our diet. Fruits are not a good protein source to begin with, most non starchy vegetables contain hard to digest cellulose even for them, meat&dairy&egg combo cannot even reach to them. We are left with legumes and whole grains. Legumes are relatively low in met+cys and it is hard to eat tons of them also. It looks like whole grains are one of the best energy and the best protein source for them. Refined grains won't do the trick, since we will mostly likely absorb all of it as they don't come with the bran.

 

As an addition to the topic, I stumbled upon an interesting interview between Dr. Mercola who is an hardcore ketojenic dieter (low protein though) and John Douillard who is a writer of "Eat Wheat". You can find the whole and trimmed video here:

 

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=mercola+eat+wheat

 

Mr. Douillard argues that we were eating grains since 2-3 millions years ago as they were abundant and it is much easier to gather grains than hunt other animals. I didn't check his reference for validity though, but seems reasonable. I always defended that high calories&nutrition from starchy foods provide enough calories to accelerate our brain growth. Scavenging and hunting probably also helped some especially during winter.