"How Much Do You Know About Nutrition" series | Food experts: The first thing to consider is whether whole grains are delicious or not, and the second thing to consider is whether you eat enough of them.

"The first thing about whole grains is that they taste good. They solve the problems of being easy to cook and delicious, making people like to eat them, and then the question is just how much they should be eaten." When talking about the consumption and future development of whole grains, Li Yongfu, associate professor at the School of Food Science and Engineering at Jiangnan University and the National Engineering Research Center for Grain Fermentation and Food Biomanufacturing, said that he has studied the processing of whole grain staples for more than 10 years.

Whole grains have many benefits, but not many people eat them

Whole grains have many health benefits, including good effects on improving chronic diseases such as high blood sugar/diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, constipation and certain cancers. Many people with high blood sugar/diabetes also know that they should eat whole grains, but not many people actually eat them. Why?

“Because it’s difficult to cook and doesn’t taste good!” Li Yongfu came to this conclusion after an in-depth investigation. This is also the problem he needs to solve during the research process—whole grains have poor cooking performance, poor water absorption performance, poor taste, and poor flavor.

Among whole grains, brown rice is the closest to white rice and is the most easily accepted by the public. Therefore, the first whole grain that Li Yongfu studied was brown rice. Brown rice has a skin, poor water absorption, and is not easy to cook. If it is cooked together with white rice, it cannot be cooked at the same time. This is a problem facing him. "If we can make some holes in the brown rice skin and open the water absorption barrier, will this solve this problem?" Li Yongfu thought, so after continuous efforts, he developed the surface micro-seam technology to solve the problem of brown rice being difficult to cook.

The bran taste of brown rice is also an important reason why many people do not like to eat whole grains. Li Yongfu produces aroma by adjusting the temperature to cause the Maillard reaction, and uses targeted adaptation technology to reasonably match different whole grains or whole grains with miscellaneous beans to make whole grains delicious.

"After the slow-sugar rice product I developed containing a variety of whole grains came out, we had consumers test it in more than 20 provinces and cities. They all said it tasted very good, and many people thought it was even better than white rice," Li Yongfu said happily.

It is recommended that the proportion of whole grains in staple foods should be about half

"We have solved the problem of whole grains being easy to cook and delicious, so that everyone likes to eat them, and then the next step is to eat enough." Li Yongfu said that some people eat whole grains by just adding a little bit of whole grains to rice, which is far from enough. It is recommended that the proportion of whole grains in staple foods should be about half. The proportion of whole grains in the slow-sugar staple foods we make is about 50%. Eating whole grains in this way is effective in improving conditions such as high blood sugar, and consumers will have a good experience and continue to eat them.

"We have so many kinds of whole grains in our country, and we should all make use of them. My whole-grain staple food research and development has expanded from brown rice to black rice, and then to germinated brown rice and highland barley rice, from slow-sugar rice/rice to slow-sugar steamed buns/bread and their premixes, etc. Our team has spent 10 years building an innovation system for the research and development, engineering and industrialization of slow (raw) sugar healthy staple food technology." said Li Yongfu.

"A method for producing rice specifically for people with high blood sugar levels", "A method for preparing delicious and easy-to-cook black rice", "A method for producing easy-to-cook sprouted brown rice", "A low-GI whole-grain rice and its application", "A low-GI Chinese pastry premix and its product preparation method"... Li Yongfu's team has developed more than 20 authorized or applied patents, all of which are delicious whole-grain healthy foods that can be served on people's tables.

This article was scientifically reviewed by Li Yongfu, Associate Professor at the School of Food Science and Engineering of Jiangnan University and National Engineering Research Center for Grain Fermentation and Food Biomanufacturing, with contributions also from Qiao Jingfang from the Whole Grain Channel of the People's Daily Health Client.