The 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans and its predecessors stressed that whole grains remain a food category that many Americans simply do not eat enough of, and that whole grains are a major source of dietary fiber, which is a shortfall nutrient in the United States. How can this trend be reversed? Increasing the amount and variety of whole grain foods in U.S. school food programs was one of the original goals of the Grains for Health Foundation, which is a collaborative group of researchers, educators, health professionals, and industry leaders working together to make whole grains more accessible to consumers. Through research, training programs for school foodservice personnel, and other activities, the foundation realized its initial objective.
The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) implemented a requirement (effective July 1, 2014) that all grains served at the national school breakfast and lunch programs must be whole grain-rich. The USDA Food and Nutrition Service defines whole grain-rich foods as products with at least 50% whole grains, and that any other grains in these products must be enriched. Food manufacturers responded to the legislative change with more offerings suitable for school programs.
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Figure 1. Percent of breakfast and lunch meals containing whole grains at different school levels. Adapted from Merlo et al. (2015)
Some challenges remain such as plate waste and food neophobia. A comparison of Nebraskan fifth grade students (ages 9–12 years) in Title I schools where at least 40% of students receive free or reduced-cost school lunches with students in non-Title I schools demonstrates the complex nature of nutrition education (Hall et al. 2016). Students in the Title I schools had significantly lower knowledge and intakes of whole grains. Elementary school students in southeast Texas chose more whole-grain foods in 2013 than they did in 2011, with no difference in waste (Cullen et al. 2015). Whole grains were widely available in U.S. schools according to the 2014 School Health Policies and Practices Study (SHPPS) (Figure 1) (Merlo et al. 2015).
Whole Grain Summit The Grains for Health Foundation organizes a Whole Grain Summit conference regularly to foster communication about whole grains and to identify potential avenues for increasing whole grain consumption. The 2015 conference was held June 24–26 in Portland, OR, and was jointly hosted by the Oregon State University Moore Family Center for Whole Grain Foods, Nutrition and Preventive Health and the Grains for Health Foundation. The Moore Family Center was established through a generous donation by Bob and Charlee Moore, the founders of Bob’s Red Mill Natural Foods, which is based in Milwaukie, OR.
Catherine Woteki, the under secretary for the USDA’s Research, Education, and Economics (REE) program and the USDA’s chief scientist, welcomed attendees with her discussion of the importance of public-private partnerships in grains and health. She described new ventures to translate USDA findings into practical solutions for the food industry. Her keynote presentation set the tone for the conference: government, industry, and academia must work together to increase whole grain consumption for improved public health. Physiologist Kent Thornburg, director of the Moore Institute for Nutrition and Wellness and M. Lowell Edwards Chair, professor of Medicine, director of the Center for Developmental Health at the Knight Cardiovascular Institute at Oregon State University, focused his second keynote presentation on the timely topic of epigenetic gene regulation by diet and the need for encouraging healthful diets early in the lifespan, even before birth.
