Hello, this is Monica Reinagle, and this week's episode of the Nutrition Diva

podcast is adapted from my new book, Nutrition Diva's Secrets for a Healthy Diet, What to Avoid, and what to stop worrying about.

It's available wherever you buy or download books.

And today's topic is grains, and whether they really are necessary for a healthy diet.

One of the reasons that grains have become such a central part of the human diet is that they have a long shelf life. Unlike meat, dairy, and fresh produce, grains

pack a whole lot of food energy, also known as calories, into a small lightweight package that

can be stored indefinitely without refrigeration or other preservation.

If you've got some dirt on a water supply,

your last handful of grain can be used to create next season's food supply. You can see why they caught on.

Although grains are portable and non-perishable, they're not really edible in their raw state.

You can boil, steam, or sprout whole grains and eat them that way, or you can mill

the grains into flour and use the flour to make bread, tortillas, or pasta.

Either way, it's considered a whole grain food if all of the parts of the grain are included,

the nutrient-rich germ, the starchy endosperm, and the fibrous bran coating.

Now if the bran and the germ have been removed,

as in white flour, it's said to be a refined grain.

Keeping the germ makes whole grain foods

somewhat higher in certain vitamins and minerals.

But the primary nutritional advantage of whole grains is that the fiber from the bran slows down

the speed at which the starches in the end endosperm are converted into blood sugar.

Said another way, whole grain foods have a lower glycemic load,

and when you're talking about glycemic load, lower is generally better.

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