February 16, 2006 -- FDA Defines Food Term ‘Whole Grain’

Consumers who have been confused as to what, exactly, are the “whole grains” they are supposed to eat every day under the 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans got some help yesterday from the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which published a definition of “whole grain.” According to the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, a “whole grain” is a cereal grain--whether intact, ground, cracked, or flaked-- that retains the principal components of the intact grain, in the same relative proportions that they exist in the intact grain. Those “principal components” are the starchy endosperm of the grain, its outer bran, and its germ. In refining grains for many food products, some of the bran and the germ is removed—brown rice becomes white rice, for example—and that loses dietary fiber, vitamins, and minerals, the FDA pointed out. Under the draft guidance issued yesterday, only products that contain the entire cereal can call themselves “whole grain,” which excludes a lot of foods Americans eat, such as pizzas that are billed as “whole grain” when the crust is actually made from refined flour with just a little bit of whole grain added. Under the proposed new rules, the FDA said, that crust will have to be made entirely from whole wheat flour, or stop calling itself “whole grain.” Among the cereals that are available in whole grain form the FDA lists barley, buckwheat, bulgur, corn, millet, rice, rye, oats, sorghum, wheat, and wild rice. The FDA’s announcement is available at http://www.fda.gov.