Nutrients in Refined vs. Whole Grains

Pictured: White rice, brown rice and black wild rice (only the brown and black rice are whole grain)

We actually don’t keep track of any of our food stats whether it’s calories, fat grams, carbs or nutrients. One of the key messages I took away from Michael Pollan’s book, In Defense of Food, is that if you eat a variety of whole foods that’s heavy on plants and reasonable in quantity then the rest will just fall into place. After all the subtitle of his book is “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” And we agree that this philosophy is a whole lot easier than weighing out 4 ounces of salmon for dinner or writing down how many calories we consumed in a day.

Now that’s not to say knowing how nutrients in different foods compare couldn’t be valuable information, which is why I’m sharing the below charts today from the Whole Grains Council. In a recent post about “Understanding Grains” I detailed the difference between some of the most common whole and refined grains, and overall I think most people get the fact that whole-wheat is far more nutritious than refined white flour. But lately quite a few readers have been trying to challenge me when I say brown rice is more nutritious than white rice. So without further ado, below are the exact numbers from the Whole Grains Council that very clearly show you the difference between…

• The whole grain – In the case of wheat and rice the whole grain versions are whole-wheat flour and brown rice, although other colored rice (like black and red) are also considered to be whole-grain.
• The refined grain – The refined grain is what you end up with after two of the most nutritious parts of the grain are removed (the bran and the germ…read more about this in the “Understanding Grains” post), which gives the grain a longer shelf life.
• Enriched grain – Since refining the grain takes out a great deal of nutrition, food scientists try to compensate by adding back in what nutrients they think are missing and most important. The problem is that nature is complex and food science isn’t easy…so the end result, enriched white flour or enriched white rice, is still not as nutritious as the original whole grain.

(Click image to enlarge chart)

(Click image to enlarge chart)