Do your kids ever come asking for a snack while you’re making them a meal? Or worse, just after you’ve fed them a meal? So do mine!
Feeding our kids is such a huge part of parenting. It’s a challenge to keep enough food around to keep them satisfied. It can be an even bigger challenge to try to figure out what we should be feeding them. The opinions and advice from our society keep changing. And the food that is put out for us to eat usually doesn’t match what we’re told we should eat!
Today I’m going to focus on grain, because I feel like it’s the most messed with and least understood of the foods available for us.
Daniel’s wisdom with Whole Grain
The first chapter of Daniel in the Old Testament has a story about grain that shows the good qualities of whole grains. About 600 years before Christ was born, many people from Jerusalem had been taken to the kingdom of Babylon. Some of the children of Israel were taken to the king’s palace to be taught like the Chaldeans. The main staples of their diet were meat and wine.
Daniel and his friends had been taught a different way of eating, and felt that giving in to the king’s meat and wine would make them unclean. So they asked if they could instead have a diet of pulse (a whole grain) and water. They proposed an experiment – for 10 days they would have pulse and water, and then they would be compared with those who’d mainly had meat and wine. When those 10 days were over, they looked healthier and their minds were sharper than any of the others.
I believe there is a lot of truth to this story, not only because it’s in the Bible. It matches well with other things I’ve learned about whole grain.
My Study of Grains
I’ve mentioned before that in 2011 my hubby and I studied nutrition because we were both trying to lose weight. One of the biggest things we learned about was grains. We learned that in our society now, most of our grain is separated and bleached before it gets put into packages as flour or into our crackers, cereal, breads, and pastas. The part that they make into white bleached flour is the starch, which has very little nutritional value by itself. They do that because it lasts longer on the shelves that way, and because if they can break it apart they can use the different parts of the grain to make more money.
The part of the grain that they take away before making products to sell is full of fiber, protein, and other nutrients our bodies need. In our science studies at homeschool we learned that the 4 kinds of nutrients our bodies need are carbohydrates for energy, protein for cell production, fiber for digestion, and fat for a variety of functions. A whole grain, then, has everything our bodies need to survive.
As a kid I liked white bread because I thought it tasted better than wheat bread. Many people now think that bread in general is junk food, and in reality, white bread is junk food because it lacks the nutrients that bread is supposed to have. Another popular idea right now is that we need protein more than anything else. What I have learned just from looking at nutrients in different foods is that grains, legumes, fruits, and vegetables all have protein in them! We don’t need a lot of meat or dairy to fill that need for protein. One serving of whole grain pasta has as much protein as a serving of yogurt!
Take a look at these different grains’ nutrition facts. Even the white rice and unbleached white flour have 3 grams of protein per serving. The whole wheat bread, toasted oats cereal, and oats each have 5 grams per serving, and the whole grain pasta has 7 grams of protein per serving.
My Whole Grain Experience
When we changed our diet, trying to lose weight in 2011, it was easier for me to get off the extra weight than it ever had been. Now that I’m done having babies, it has been easy for me to keep off the weight that I worked so hard to lose since I keep eating whole grains and a variety of other foods. And I feel good. On days when we eat with friends and relatives and don’t eat the low fat, whole grain, produce filled diet that we usually do, I can feel the difference. My stomach feels heavy and I feel sluggish compared with the way I feel most of the time.
I know from trying it that eating whole grains often every day is good for my body, and good for my family. The Lord gave us an abundance of grains, among other wonderful foods, to take care of ourselves and our families. He knew what He was doing when He made those foods for us.
It is our resposibility as parents to watch what we are feeding to our kids, to make sure they get the nutrition they need.
You can read more in Simple Nutrition for Your Kids. To read about how I lost weight from 10 pregnancies see Fitting in the Skinny Pants.
Thanks for reading my post. I hope you’re enjoying your adventure.
