A few years ago, the Atkins diet convinced many consumers that cereal grains were the fast train to fat land.
Grain marketers noticed a slowdown in demand for their products, while meat sellers noticed stronger demand.
But that tide appears to have turned, said a nutritionist working with the Canadian Wheat Board to boost sales.
“Grains have come a long ways in the past five years,” said Laura Pasut, part of a campaign called Grains – They’re Essential, run by the CWB, the Baking Association of Canada and the Canadian Pasta Manufacturers Association.
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“Whole grains have a lot of benefits and consumers realize that now.”
The popularity of the Atkins diet and other “low carb” diets blamed cereal grain for the developed world’s obesity epidemic.
The diets claimed, with some scientific justification, that refined flour in bread, pasta and baking, as well as other simple carbohydrates such as potatoes, sugar and rice, had an almost immediate “glycemic reaction” that caused the human body to store the rush of calories as fat.
Millions of people adopted the diets, and many lost weight.
Many people dumped grain altogether.
“Instead of just limiting some of the high calorie grain products, like croissants and pastries, they eliminated the healthy, lower fat versions of the breads and the pastas, and those are not the items that are causing the weight gain,” said Pasut.
“At that time grains were looked at as only the refined grains. Whole grains and whole wheats were available everywhere, but people’s perception was that cereals were refined grains which ‘are my weight problem.’ “
But over time the diets faded in popularity, which doesn’t surprise her.
“You’re giving up too much taste and flavour,” she said.
Consumers who tired of the meat-and-vegetables low carb diets found they didn’t have to return to a world in which most bread and pasta were made from refined grains.
The baking industry had moved quickly to develop more whole grain products.
More whole wheat and whole grain bread is now available and whole grain pasta is now readily available.
As well, some of the suspicion against cereals was eased when scientific studies found links between grain consumption and reduction of cancer and other diseases.
Pasut thinks cereal grain has come back into almost everyone’s diet and consumers are unlikely to avoid them again.
“I think people are becoming more aware of a health conscious way of eating and trying to balance their foods: balance the proteins, the grains, the vegetables and the fruits.”
