Episode 194: Whole Grain & Prepping

spk_1:   0:00
Hello, everybody.

spk_0:   0:02
Hello, everybody. Welcome to the show. The big show, the most important and could claim podcast that is recorded in our vehicle. Or started adding the big breath. More dramatic thing that makes more dramatic. I think

spk_1:   0:14
it makes it more oxygenated. That's close enough.

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All right. Welcome to the show. Today we have what we call a mystery episode. Where is one host of the show? That would be me knows what the episode is about? Well, the other host of the show that would mind lovely and talented wife Spice doesn't have a clue what the show is about. But then again, that doesn't matter. Because she can talk on any subject whether he knows anything about it. More not. However, having said that, not only is this a mystery episode this is a mystery episode where I'm going to introduce the topic and the basic be quiet because she knows a lot more about it than I do already. So are you excited?

spk_1:   0:56
Sure. I'm excited to find out something I know a lot about.

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Are you ready for the topic?

spk_1:   1:04
Born ready?

spk_0:   1:06
Okay. Why should preppers start fully concentrating on storing and use whole grain instead of flour products. What are the advantages of whole grain? And why is this important thing for a prepper to do? I told you, I've nailed that

spk_1:   1:33
right. Well, I have some ideas on the subject. Yeah, because I made a move to start converting our household the whole grain some years ago. Based on many of these same points, one of these is that a lot of the proper foods are barely highly concentrated in the carbs department because they're cheap in the store. Well, and if you're eating a lot of carbs and most of what you're eating is highly refined carbs, white flour carbs, basically, then your nutritional profile is much impaired, especially as it goes goes to promoting things like diabetes and heart disease and things like that, because the what you do when you were fined a grain, you take this grain. It's got a whole bunch of start stored carbohydrate, which the plant is intending to feed its embryo, and it's got a little a plant embryo in there called the germ. And then it's got various protective coatings like Thea Brand coat, and each of those were part of her seat So when you make the highly refined grains, you take all that and you knock off the hard outer show coating parts, and then you usually get rid of the germ. Parts be germinated, it might be called, and then what you got left is a whole bunch of car, and you grind that a pro fund, and then maybe you tossem some nutrients back in so you can call it enriched. And then you've got the white flour or whatever

spk_0:   3:11
it is after you bleach it yet Really?

spk_1:   3:13
Yeah, what they call wheat flour, By the way, it's all wheat flour. What they call wheat flour is just a flower that hasn't been bleached, but it has had all this other stuff to it, so it is not. Wheat flour is not nutritionally superior to normal white flower or bread flour, which is just find her ground white Flower

spk_0:   3:36
writes. A lot of times you'll see wheat bread. Unfortunately, sub subway, one of the many comes and does it with wheat bread. It's not whole whole wheat bread.

spk_1:   3:47
You get whole grain bread at places like subway in grocery stores and stuff like that. But the hole is an important part of it and if it just says whole grain, but it doesn't say 100% whole grain than what they mean is we put some whole grains in so we could put that on the label. But we also put in a lot of enriched white flower because it makes it lighter and fluffier. And that's what our customers are used to.

spk_0:   4:10
So we have to be pretty careful. And there's actually there's, there's a lot of there are some brands were it is 100% whole and the bread can still be lightened. Fluffy can be. I know Roman meal bread, for example, makes Ah make the sandwich loaf out of 100% whole wheat, and it's very good.

spk_1:   4:33
And it's a lot like other sandwich Brigid by a store that are made of completely enriched white flower right? But it's better for you. What? The reasons that it's actually better for you. First off, a lot of the minerals and things are in the germ, so if stuff is de germinated, if it's highly processed, you don't get that. Sorry, I need to arrange my head's at it. Slipped. Also, if you take off the brand coat. Then you lose a lot of fiber. And losing a lot of the fiber not only makes you feel hungry sooner after you eat a product.

spk_0:   5:10
Okay? I'm sorry. There's gonna be a little bit of noise, but that's thing way high. Now

spk_1:   5:15
you gotta adjust the microphone. Yeah,

spk_0:   5:17
it was like sitting up north of, you know, So while you try and even at the volume in post. But if she's a little louder now, it's because of Mike's actually in front of her face, not in front of her eyeball.

spk_1:   5:29
Yeah, it just slipped down and hit me in the lip. And that makes an annoying sound every time I make a word. So I had to do something about that one. All right, maybe we're set now. We'll try it. Okay. You take off the brand, you take out the fiber and without the fiber one, you get hungry a lot sooner after you eat the product. Because it moves through digestive tract sooner and two. Because you absorb the nutrients faster, you get a higher blood sugar spikes and that you have to release more insulin to deal with that and that kind of behavior promotes unhappy metabolism that makes you less sensitive to insulin. It helps promote diabetes. It helps promote heart disease. It helps promote stuff like that. So the whole grains actually are more nutritious than the white flowers and what they call enriched means they have tossed back in purified versions of some of the nutrients and minerals that they took out in the first place. It doesn't mean it's more enriched the whole wheat. It means it's more enrich than if we had to dump the stuff back in. It's actually still not as enriched in nutrients as original 1%. Whole grain stuff is so those are the primary benefits of the whole grains. As a nutritional element. You've also got the element of storage, because if you're gonna long term store foods, you can't make a highly processed white flour at home in any reasonable way. So if you're gonna long term store white flour, it's gonna be because you bought it as white flour and stored it. And once you break up the colonels and start processing stuff, the shelf life goes way down so you can take a five gallon bucket of hard white wheat kernels or hard red wheat kernels, and you could put him in in a bucket and you can take the oxygen out. You conceal it that way, and you can put it somewhere relatively cool. More sure controlled all that stuff, and it's gonna be fine for years and years and years.

spk_0:   7:37
It's gonna outlast you. Probably.

spk_1:   7:38
Yeah, and then you can take that same product and grind it up

spk_0:   7:43
by just simply grinding. You don't have to go through 45 mechanization Sze grind it into a little bit.

spk_1:   7:50
There is no way to grind it up without getting a whole bunch of oxygen exposure on every single piece of that. And oxygen exposure is part of the problem.

spk_0:   7:59
Well, it's fine. You know, it's fine as long as you get it right away. Yeah, it's, you know, it's a shelf life of flowers about six months a year. Yeah, yeah, was its ground.

spk_1:   8:11
And that's a real thing. A lot of things they say. Shelf life is whatever, and it's still find months or years later. No, it's not. I've done that when I have Ah, we have a bucket of whole wheat at home. We colonels, wheat, Berries, they call him, and I grind him up a little bit of the time. Well, you have got one open, and I grind it up a little bit at a time when I'm gonna make bread or something with it, because I found if I grind up too much at once, it does start making inferior bread after, oh, a couple months after it's been ground sitting in a temperature controlled kitchen.

spk_0:   8:51
But of course, we have no preservatives of any kind in it. Yeah, that's one of the reasons that commercial flowers last longer than that is because they have preservatives now. Another thing to keep in mind about whole wheat in particular is you know there are other uses for you can make quit Berries out of things, but you're simply soaking them overnight.

spk_1:   9:14
Yeah, it's really blamed that way, but you can add stuff like dried little bits of dried fruit and a chopped nuts to it sweetener here into that sort of thing. But I just like chopped fruit, and it makes it much nicer, or you can make a more savory thing out of it by putting things like some people mix up bacon bits and stuff in it.

spk_0:   9:34
Now we've been talking about whole wheat, but there are other whole grains to like whole oats, just regular folks,

spk_1:   9:42
their oats. And then there are steel cut oats, and then there are regular or rolled oats. And then there are quick oats, and that is the order of how much they've been processed. The whole lot's are the least processed. The uh rolled oats have been steamed and squished, and the quick oats have been,

spk_0:   10:04
but they're still.

spk_1:   10:05
It's still a whole grain, but it's been more processed

spk_0:   10:08
right in the basically, the bushes, the outer shells

spk_1:   10:12
and quick oats have been the most most cooked, so they're the most processed. I prefer the regular rolled boat because they make pretty could quick oatmeal out of it, and they've still got a good shelf life going on.

spk_0:   10:28
Educating bread out of it.

spk_1:   10:30
I could get through a big bucket of those guys one of oats regularly in there

spk_0:   10:35
just to get us out of, um, over oh, pancakes, all kinds

spk_1:   10:38
at a little bit bread and make some oat bread

spk_0:   10:42
a little honey in him and

spk_1:   10:43
cook. Listen

spk_0:   10:44
that make cookies cool cookies.

spk_1:   10:47
Good, good. Whole grain food. Good cookies. Must be health food, right?

spk_0:   10:52
Popcorn is

spk_1:   10:54
shouldering, too. Yep.

spk_0:   10:55
It's actually good old great food, very high in fiber.

spk_1:   10:59
Whereas the if you buy a corn muffin mix at the store. It's usually partly highly processed corn meal and partly wheat flour. And it doesn't have nearly the nutritional profile or the shelf life of

spk_0:   11:14
that stuff. Yeah, so yeah, ber big, huge fans of gold off whole wheat, whole grain products. And I'm gonna tell you something. I'm gonna give you a easy in your ready for an easy in.

spk_1:   11:31
Go for it.

spk_0:   11:32
And Eazy in two whole food storage. I suggest everybody who's listings who has not tried it yet. Pick up a come just one box of whole eat spaghetti. Whole wheat spaghetti noodles are Don't let I find the much better tasting. Even back when I was a it was a enriched flour feet.

spk_1:   11:58
That's how I got him into it. In fact, is the spaghetti first?

spk_0:   12:01
Because not only are they better tasting to me, there are a lot more filling.

spk_1:   12:05
Their texture is much less puny and wimpy,

spk_0:   12:09
right? And when you're cooking them, I cook that I basically am the family cook. Um, when you're cooking spaghetti noodle, you know how you have to worry about them clinging, and none of that occurs and they do not clean. You don't think that don't oversight trick. They don't become a soggy mass. They stay relatively. You can refrigerate them and they don't swell up to 10 times. There's welcoming swell up on you. They're just It is a far superior product, and it doesn't cost much more.

spk_1:   12:42
They have a slightly more hardy taste in a slightly more hardy mouth feel been white noodles, so some people will take a little bit of getting used to. But they are not dramatically different from the white product. But in my mind, there clearly spirit of light product.

spk_0:   13:01
You know, other things, like the penny pastas and things like that. They work really well in, uh, even though you could make a whole wheat lasagna that's outstanding. It's probably not the first place to start. Just because the lasagna is

spk_1:   13:18
the texture of the noodles is

spk_0:   13:19
it's not quite

spk_1:   13:20
doesn't work quite as well there,

spk_0:   13:23
but that's just that would be a good place for you to start. Of course, you know

spk_1:   13:26
spaghetti and macaroni ever. That

spk_0:   13:28
deal is, You know, if you think that if you see the word wheat, I encourage you to the product upside down and look for bird enriched. If you see the word enriched, it is not holding

spk_1:   13:44
its white flour.

spk_0:   13:45
It's white flower that has,

spk_1:   13:47
when they say when it is Ah, whole wheat product, it says. Whole wheat

spk_0:   13:52
or whole grain practice. Some of these breads, like the one I particularly like, is the forget the name of the company, but it's a nine grain, but it's a nine grain whole grade. All nine grains are hope.

spk_1:   14:06
Yeah, a lot of those multigrain breads are. If you just look at the generic multigrain breads, you'll find their 90% enriched flour, and then they've got a smattering of other grains thrown ins. They could put it on the label, but if you turn it over and read the label and find out it's got a bunch of whole grains in, it is the main ingredients. There you go.

spk_0:   14:25
Okay to tips. First, the health food section of your store is much more likely to be is much more likely to have hope. Green products. But I'm gonna tell you there is in, you know, we do not have sponsored on this show. Nobody sponsors us. We're just everyday people. We have no no dog in the hunt. But it will tell you one place that you can go is a lot less deceptive. General grocery store. It's a lot less deceptive. And you will find a lot better, healthier products at a very good price. That's all these? Yeah, they have totally flipped it around from where they used to be, which back in the eighties they were just where you get the sheep.

spk_1:   15:10
Terrible food. That was really cheap.

spk_0:   15:13
Nutritional, very tasty. But it was all I mean, it was hydrogenated. They hydrogen ate every partially hydrogenated everything.

spk_1:   15:23
They don't sell transfats in the store anymore.

spk_0:   15:26
They're not. They're not a product in the store. As trans fats. Trans fats are a big deal. Well, they're not that big a deal. If you don't mind. Like heart attacks,

spk_1:   15:34
most people kind of do

spk_0:   15:36
so many few. Just if you want to place that doesn't play fast and loose with the rules. Nearly as much as a lot of other places, too. All these or Trader Joe's did the same people. Trader Joe's and all these are owned by the same people. Lot of people don't know that, but all these is like a cheaper than a Trader Joe's. But then, of course, there's There's the traditional, uh, like the whole foods. They tend to have a lot more realistic ingredient list, but they're

spk_1:   16:05
also paint can

spk_0:   16:06
on this whole whole paycheck because they're not.

spk_1:   16:09
They're not

spk_0:   16:09
cheesy who, when you're eating out, it's really a lot harder.

spk_1:   16:16
But if you ask for, say, corn tortillas instead of wheat tortillas, you'll get a whole grain product.

spk_0:   16:23
Corn is actually mostly whole grain. When you try is because we got another She had another podcast on just that. We're not gonna really get into that process, but

spk_1:   16:33
it's something I tripped over on starting to write. This information is how you need to treat corn to get the most nutrition out of it. So I made a ah post on that. We did a podcast on that.

spk_0:   16:46
She's gonna she was actually I'd come up with the idea for this for this article that she's gonna write that will go off with this podcast, and she just didn't know she actually didn't subject pretty well. She's putting on an article for it. It's just she didn't know that's what this particular podcast was going to be about. So this one's not quite is off the cuff, as some of our mystery episodes have been. Okay, is there anything else you want to add or throw some more information in? Toss it out

spk_1:   17:17
just for experimental purposes. Several years ago, we brought bought some whole wheat pasta products, and we didn't give him any special storage except keeping amount of light and in a fairly low humidity spot and in sealed packages. So they had low air exposure, and they were fine years later.

spk_0:   17:35
Actually, we did. To be fair, we did actually do a test. I took some of them and put them inside of a mason jar and vacuum sealed to see if that would make any difference as to how long they lasted. And then, about three years after I did that, we opened him up, and then we took three year old boxes of of pasta and first no, no, no.

spk_1:   18:03
Three years was not enough to find a significant difference. And they were both Justus good as fresh.

spk_0:   18:07
Now here's here's we're gonna come back to people like, Well, yeah, you know, this may not last 2 30 We need the 30 years thing is just such a myth. You don't need survival food that last 30 years. What you need to do is have food on hand that lasts long enough that you store it for a reasonable amount of time before you eat it in rotation. And you need to have food that you have in storage that you're eating as you go. That's how you get your long term storage is. You eat the old stuff.

spk_1:   18:37
That's all your stuff

spk_0:   18:39
while it's still fresh and you replace it with newer, fresher stuff. Rotational E. And that's a big deal. You've got to keep the rotation going, but this way you're only buying food that you eat because there's no use of stocking junk food or food that you're not going to eat now. We do have some long, long term storage stuff. Most of it's in cans. We do have several buckets of wheat set aside that, you know, because they don't get wet inside the last, Basically, ever.

spk_1:   19:12
Yeah, we got a really good deal. He found a really good deal on him. At one point we stocked up.

spk_0:   19:16
So So we have some of those, but

spk_1:   19:20
we do it out of those two. We have a couple of open ones up in the kitchen, and we just pulled from him of rotated through four or five of those things votes. Because I like oats for breakfast sometimes sometimes of the year.

spk_0:   19:34
So But the key part of like doing pasta and stuff like that is, if you don't eat pasta now, you probably don't want to be storing pasta because you're not gonna want to eat it then,

spk_1:   19:48
Yeah, the whole key to diet thing doesn't work real well in proper world.

spk_0:   19:52
No, not really. Anything short of that?

spk_1:   19:56
No, I would say Do it for it's healthier. And in the whole grain form, it stores better it. And at least once you're adjusted to it. It tastes a lot better. So

spk_0:   20:11
yeah, the other stuff kind of just taste planned after you get adjusted to

spk_1:   20:15
and feel soggy.

spk_0:   20:17
Don't feel sorry. We went up to make spaghetti get No, that's for getting

spk_1:   20:24
farm truck in front of us, stumping off

spk_0:   20:26
but mud. Okay, well, thanks for listening. And we'll catch the next time.