What do food product labels that say “whole wheat” or “100% whole grain wheat” mean? Are these better for health?
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That standard white wheat flour you see everywhere is processed flour.
Wheat seed has 3 parts – they’re called bran, endosperm, and germ. When processing the flour, bran and germ are removed, leaving only the endosperm. Naturally, removing parts of the seed also removes the nutrients, which makes processed white flour nutritionally poorer.
Whole wheat flour, on the other hand, is exactly what it says – flour made out of whole seed with nothing removed. That means it contains more micronutrients (fiber, vitamins, minerals) than processed white flour, which makes whole wheat flour a better choice health-wise than processed flour.
You just need to be careful when reading the labels because when the front of the packaging says “whole wheat”, that may mean it has like 20% whole wheat flour, and the rest is processed white flour. If it says “100% whole wheat”, then there’s no processed flour in it.
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