12 Steps to Whole Foods

Replacing White Flour with Whole Grains
Regardless of whether phytates in whole grains lead to mineral deficiencies, soaking and slightly fermenting
your grain clearly aids in digestion. It costs nothing and doesn’t really add time to a recipe’s preparation,
although you do a portion of the work in advance. Most adults in the Western world need to be kind to their
digestive systems. That’s because before most of us get serious about treating our bodies right (which you have
done, if you are reading this book), we have abused our bodies with the modern lifestyle. In particular, we’ve
abused our digestive systems. Some of us have decades of damage to undo.
Part of your new whole-grain habit, then, is to soak your flour or grain for up to 24 hours as often as possible
and add a bit of whey, kefir, or yogurt. Even 8 hours of soaking is very helpful. Many of the recipes in this
chapter call for soaking the flour or grain.
The grain with the highest phytate content is oats, so if you like oatmeal, put the boiling water in the rolled oats
right after eating breakfast. Add 1-2 Tbsp. of yogurt or kefir, cover with a lid, and just reheat it for breakfast the
next morning. Leaving it out for 24 hours will not create any problems. If you like sourdough and fermented
foods, you’ll probably like the slight tang of the oatmeal done this way. This requires thinking ahead, but if you
do it for a while, it becomes a habit—and one worth developing.
Unlike oats and wheat, brown rice, millet, and buckwheat have low phytate content, so you can soak them just
overnight, for shorter periods of time. When I am serving brown rice for dinner, I put boiling water in it in the
morning, cover it, and leave it to steam all day in the oven, preheated to 350 and then turned off. The rice is
perfectly cooked at dinnertime. When making kasha (buckwheat cereal), I put the boiling water in the night
before, letting it steam overnight.
When making baked goods, get in the habit of putting the flour in the blender or bowl with the required liquids
(and with a bit of a fermented dairy product like kefir), and just leaving it all day (or night) before completing
the recipe. You’ll also find that your baked goods are lighter, with a lovely texture, as you take this additional
step. The fermentation creates leavening, so you can reduce or leave out the baking powder when you have
presoaked flour with kefir or yogurt. This extra step of soaking grains or flour, while requiring you to think
ahead, doesn’t add time to your preparation, since the dish is then ready, or nearly ready, when breakfast or
dinnertime rolls around.
You’ll be glad to know that you don’t always have to make soaked-grain breads and grain products from
scratch. At your health food store, you can buy sprouted-grain tortillas, English muffins, and manna bread with
several varieties like sunflower seed, carrot-raisin, and more.
Don’t be frustrated if you just learned about phytates for the first time and now wonder if whole grains are
good for you! If you’re stumped about whether eating whole grains (even unsoaked) is better than white flour,
the answer is a definitive YES! First of all, white flour robs your body of minerals, too, at a faster rate—and it’s
virtually devoid of fiber and nutrition. Second, remember that literally hundreds of studies document the link
between whole grains and blood sugar control, among many other health benefits. And those studies were
based on unsoaked grains. That one benefit alone—that fiber dramatically slows the release of sugars into your
bloodstream—is critically important to your future.
Third, the phytate issue, while worth discussing here, is by no means settled science. In fact, Reddy and Sathe
published a book in 2001 called Food Phytates that surveys the growing body of research on phytates. They
claim that phytates are free-radical scavenging antioxidants that may reduce blood glucose as well as the risk
for high cholesterol and cardiovascular disease, kidney stones, and some forms of cancer. 2 So, the jury is still
out on the precise role of phytates. Whether or not they are heroes or villains is a hotly debated controversy—
250 12 Steps to Whole Foods
© Copyright Robyn Openshaw