Food types: Grains

Michael and Leon are camping and they are really hungry. Luckily, they brought corn on the cob with them! They can grill it on the campfire and eat it as a snack. Corn belongs to a group of foods called GRAINS. Grains are all kinds of small, hard, dry seeds of grasses that we use for food.

Besides corn, rice, wheat, oats, rye, buckwheat, barley and millet, are also grains. The seeds come in different shapes, sizes and flavours, and they all have this in common - The full seed consists of three layers: the bran, the endosperm and the germ. When the seed has all three layers, we call the grains WHOLEGRAIN. For most of the world’s population, grains are the main source of nutrition. Rice for example is the basic food for half of all the people in the world.

Grains have a high nutritional value because they contain slow carbohydrates, B vitamins, minerals and fibre. Most of these nutrients are contained in the bran and the germ, which makes the wholegrains the healthiest and most nutritious grains. Wholegrains are a very important part of a healthy diet! But sometimes, grains are put through a milling process that removes the bran and the germ from the seeds. After this process, grains are still nutritious but they lose most of the vitamins, minerals and fibre.

We use wholegrains and processed grains, to make delicious cakes and cookies, but also bread, pasta, noodles and breakfast cereal. And humans are not the only ones who depend on grains for food - the livestock we breed, mostly eat grains as well. With so many mouths to feed, it’s good that grains can grow in almost any environment around the world! People have been growing and eating grains for thousands of years. Who knows, maybe the people who decided to grow corn did so because they really liked the taste of it roasted over the campfire.