If whole grain foods continue to grow in popularity, farmers might find there’s more demand for different wheat classes and stricter scrutiny of their farming practices.
But the good news is that whole wheat products may be the biggest winner of the low carbohydrate diet phenomenon.
“This may be a long-term reaction to the Atkins low-carb diet fad that was going on for a while,” said Canadian Wheat Board milling and baking expert Graham Worden.
“This seems to be relatively permanent and time will tell whether this will bring a long-term change. The trend (of increasing whole grain consumption) seems to have stability.”
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White bread, pasta and french fry makers lost sales in the face of the Atkins diet onslaught. But they’ve weathered the worst of the now fading diet gale, and many have taken the strategic approach of if you can’t beat them, join them.
Most are now making products that fit into low-carbohydrate diets.
These diets were never opposed to carbohydrates completely, except for brief introduction periods. But the diets banned followers from eating refined white flour, white rice, potatoes, corn, most fruits and sugar, while recommending reducing the proportion of carbohydrates in the diet.
The diets approved of fibrous vegetables and small amounts of whole grain breads and other baked products. Grocery store shelves are now filled with whole grain, whole kernel and multigrain products.
Recently Monterey Gourmet Foods, a California pasta company, reported that a new whole wheat pasta line was booming in popularity and would soon make up to 15 percent of its overall sales.
The company said the low-carb diet movement had cut into its sales for two years, but the whole wheat pasta line had recovered some of its lost sales.
ConAgra in the United States has also introduced a whole wheat flour that tastes and looks like highly refined white flour, something Worden said may break down lingering consumer resistance to whole wheat products.
“It’s got the nutrient content, with the fibre and all the vitamin complexes of whole wheat, but with the appearance and flavour of regular white bread,” said Worden.
North American consumers, and especially children, have shied away from whole wheat breads and other products because of their slightly bitter taste and tougher, more granular and fibrous texture.
Millers have been finding ways of eliminating those problems, partly through the milling process and partly by using different wheat classes.
This is where prairie farmers could be affected. As North American millers try to reduce the bitterness and dark colour that comes from red spring wheats, they are likely to move to hard white wheats.
“I think hard white wheat will continue to become a more prominent product,” said Worden.
Farmers will likely see more demand for white wheat at the expense of red wheat, but they will also likely face more scrutiny on how they grow the wheat for whole wheat products.
When making white flour from red wheat, the kernel’s outside husk, its bran, is removed and generally ends up as animal feed. That eliminates a lot of worries about chemical residues and natural toxins such as fusarium vomitoxin.
But whole wheat products hang onto bran so any contamination problems can’t be solved by milling.
“Food safety is a major, growing concern,” said Worden.
Farmers will need to pay even more attention to proper pesticide applications and disease levels as the whole grain trend increases.
Worden said whole grain demand is growing in North America, but is not much of a factor in overseas markets. British consumers are buying more whole grain products and Germans have always eaten rye and pumpernickel breads, but “if you go to France or Spain or Italy and you talk about low-carb and multigrain products, they look at you with glassy eyes because they’re not sure what you’re talking about.” The situation is similar in Asia.
“This is by far a North American trend,” said Worden.
But within North America, Worden does not expect to see the popularity of whole grain products fade.
“I think the plateau has been raised. I think the range of products is going to stay and we’ll continue to see them.”
The low-carb craze merely reinforced the whole grains message that many aging baby boomers have heard since the 1960s.
“I think the population was ready for this. Baby boomers are thinking more about diet and we’ve been hit with messages most of our lives that whole grains are better for you, and that’s a message I think will stick,” said Worden.
