Take the Wholegrain Goodness challenge: testers can win £250 – NON TESTERS: chance to win £150. NOW CLOSED

[AnnMumsnet]

Try something different for your new year's resolutions this year - take part in the WholegrainGoodness.com challenge and be in with a chance of winning supermarket vouchers worth up to £250.

Here's what WholegrainGoodness.com, a not-for-profit campaign aiming to inspire people to eat more wholegrain, say about the challenge: "Most of us know it's important to eat at least five portions of fruit and veg every day, but did you know you should be eating more wholegrain to keep you healthy too? Nutritionists encourage eating at least three servings of wholegrain a day. But despite the nutritional benefits, national surveys show that 95% of adults don't do this, and almost a third don't eat any at all. So take part in our wholegrain challenge to help us inspire mums to get more nutritious wholegrain into their family's diet and we'll enter you into a prize draw"

The challenge is to include wholegrain in at least ONE meal or snack for the family per day for two weeks and then to add your feedback here by Sunday 9th February to be entered into a prize draw.

• "Official testers" (already selected) can win a £250 supermarket voucher of their choice

• "Non-official testers" (open to all UK MNers with at least one child aged between 2 and 16 living at home) can win a £150 supermarket voucher of their choice

You can use the variety of wholegrain foods available, such as wholegrain breads, breakfast cereals, pasta, rice, flour and even popcorn. And feel free to take part if you and your family already eat wholegrains. Visit WholegrainGoodness.com if you need help finding out what wholegrains are and to see what a serving of wholegrain looks like, as well as to get recipe ideas for inspiration and some top tips. If you have any further questions about wholegrain, ask their independent registered dietitian or go to the wholegrain FAQs (frequently asked questions) page, which we'll keep updating. You can get a free recipe booklet and sign up to their e-news alerts too.

Please add your feedback here on the following:

~ Let us know what you think of wholegrains and if you knew about the benefits already or not

~ Have you tried out any WholegrainGoodness.com recipes? How did you and your family find them?

~ Please add any other comments, recipes, tips or ideas you have too - we'd love to hear from you at various stages of the challenge

Thanks
MNHQ

Please note: comments made on this thread may be reproduced by Wholegrain Goodness (AHDB)

This is going well.
Breakfast seems the easiest for everyone to swop. I am loving my porridge! I had forgotten how filling it was, its quick and easy to make in the microwave, this is certainly a great swop and one I want to keep.
My husband is also enjoying the porridge and both my children have been eating weetabix and porridge.
Today I used wholemeal flour to make muffins and they taste great. They will be good in lunch boxes this week.
The change to wholemeal bread has also gone well. Both my children were definite white bread eaters, but have agreed to change for this. They have both admitted that 'it isn't too bad!!'
Looking forward to this coming week, seeing what other changes we can make.

I'm a non tester but I'm pleased that I actually eat more whole grain than I realised having read some of the posts above. I buy wholemeal bread and pasta and brown rice as standard in my shopping. There are some great recipes on that website that I'm going to try too.

I have been trying to get the family to eat wholemeal for ages with no luck so I knew the challenge would be difficult.
I bought some wholemeal bread and once they realised there was no white bread in the house they were forced to try it but both my husband and son said it was awful!
I sneaked in the wholemeal pasta without mentioning it and no one seemed to notice the difference!

Belated first check in - have been poorly this week with a stomach bug so not really done much eating or thinking about food.

However, have made sure that we've had wholegrain multi seeded bread which is lovely (Sainsbury's) and it's pretty much all I ate for the first half of the week, along with nibbling on some Sainsbury's multiseed thins which were also pretty nice; both are now on the 'permanent' shopping list.

I've also bought some whole grain mixes to put into soups and stews, which I'm planning on doing this week - previously had some in the cupboard but they needed to be soaked overnight so not much good for spur of the moment making soup out of odds and sods for lunch. The ones I have now only need to be cooked for 10 minutes and need no soaking, so I'm hopeful that they will make it easier to throw them into soup with no effort.

we had a guest staying over for the weekend so it hasn't been particularly grainy - needed something quick and easy on saturday so it was spaghetti bolognaise, which I still haven't found a good grain to add to that the dc won't notice particularly (dh likes quorn but I've heard lots of bad things about it recently so I'm more reticent to use it or spoil really nice beef with it half and half!). And then we had a simple roast chicken for lunch with standard trimmings - again, not so easy to get grains in there, particularly when you have a dh who loves to have a big roast as a treat and a guest for whom a roast style meal was a request when asked as he doesn't get to do them very often.

One thing that struck me was that I could have done a stuffing with whole grain - my stuffing is just white bread, thyme, butter and onion usually, which is gorgeous but not so healthy. Anybody got any good wholegrain stuffing recipes please?

oh no, lots of vomiting bugs. hope everyone's feeling better, you really don't want to think about food when you're down with a dodgy stomach...

from reading what posters with older children wrote about the DCs not liking the wholegrain options, i feel quite lucky that mine are still so small. they won't object to my meal decissions. well, of course they do but that's what being a toddler is about, right? so no major worries, really.

i just finished our shopping list for today and we'll try some things from the recipe booklet (scones, salmon cheesecake and the oaty pork). my mum is staying with us this week and i love her dearly but it's going to be difficult to sneak in wholegrains as she's quite a fussy eater. she cannot cook, so usually she's quite greatful to everyone who puts a nice meal in front of her, though

oh and meant to add that i managed to make the welsh cakes eventually. they needed a lot more fluid than usual. i normally don't add any liquids, just one large egg, but this time i had to add a good splash of milk too. the wholegrain flour seems to absorb liquids much better. end result still very tasty - i am pleased to report that at least 2 of my whole grain servings came from the cakes, haha.

Berry muffins here - really good. Used yoghurt and maple syrup - no other sugar- and rapeseed rather than sunflower oil. Yum.

Well we are now onto week two of the wholegrain goodness challenge.
Last week went well and I found it easy to incorporate wholegrain into our diets.
This is what I have got planned for our meals this week...

Week Commencing 27th January 2014

Monday 27th January 2014
When I did last weeks meal plan I forgot that it was Burns Night so we had haggis instead of stew pie! I was also unaware that haggis contains oats! So there is our wholegrain serving!
As I had quite a bit of haggis left Monday's meal will be chicken breast stuffed with haggis and redberry sauce with tatties and neeps!

Tuesday 28th January 2014
Tuna pasta bake made with wholegrain pasta and topped with a crispy cheesy oat topping.

Wednesday 29th January 2014
Beef steak and vegetable pie made with a wholemeal pastry served with potatoes

Thursday 30th January 2014
Chicken and chorizo in a creamy sauce with wholegrain brown rice.

Friday 31st January 2014
Chunky vegetable spaghetti bolognese with wholegrain spaghetti. This sauce if full of chunky pieces of peppers, courgettes, onions, mushrooms and minced beef.

Saturday 1st February 2014
Homemade chicken curry served with wholegrain brown rice.

This is going to be another yummy week!

http://hijackedbytwins.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/wholegrain-goodness-challenge-week-2.html Hijacked By Twins Week 2 Meal Plan

Hijacked By Twins Week 2 Meal Plan

Thank you for picking us mn!
Even being sick and pregnant I have been able to add in whole grain foods at least twice a day, that my stomach has liked, without too much effort and I do feel good for it. I did know roughly some of the benefits but it has been good to read from the website and know more.

Everyday this week we have eaten shreddies, for breakfast. Except one day which I ate porridge. I might try eating porridge again this week.

At lunchtimes we have eaten whole meal bread for sandwiches and toast, luckily we all love brown bread so this wasn't much of a change :)

We have managed to eat lots of wholegrain snacks. Wholemeal pitta and hummus has been a winner with dd. we have also enjoyed popcorn, Alpen cereal bars ( with whole oats and whole wheat in), and my sister in law made pecan flapjacks.

We ate wholemeal bread with our stew one night but haven't managed to include it in any other evening meal.
I bought boil in the bag brown rice so I will try that tonight, hopefully I can make a variation of the chicken and rice soup, it looks delicious.
This week I will be keeping the cereal and snacks in our meal plan but will try and incorporate whole grains into our evening meals. :)

On Sunday's we go to my mum and dad's for our Sunday dinner. ThereforeI knew that today we would not all be having our 3 recommended daily servings of wholegrain.
However I knew that we would have at least 1 serving!
Here is how we did...

Breakfast
The twins have had a wholegrain serving for their breakfasts. They have started the day with Shreddies and banana.
Joseph had his multigrain boulders and hubby had some oats while I had a mid morning snack of oat flapjack.

Lunch
We all had wholemeal bread sandwiches.

Dinner
As it was Sunday, we had a traditional Sunday dinner which had no wholemeal servings in. However I do not mind as we had wholemeal for the other meals during the day.

Day 7 Results
Twins - 2 wholegrain servings
Joseph - 2 wholegrain servings
Hubby - 2 wholegrain servings
Me - 2 wholegrain servings

Week 1 Results
After week 1 of the wholegrain goodness challenge I am amazed by how easy it is to include wholegrain into our diets. However, when I did the wholegrain shopping I was surprised by how much more wholegrain food costs. For a family that are on a budget it would be difficult, sometimes, to spend more on our weekly shopping. But to change the flour that I use for bread and to cook a mixture of both brown wholemeal products with white would be possible. I feel that the food companies should take a look at their prices. If we need to eat more wholegrain then they should make it more accessible for everyone, whether you are on a tight budget or not!
We are enjoying the wholegrain foods and hope to keep up with the changes after the challenge!

Hijacked By Twins Wholegrain Goodness Challenge Day 7 and Week 1 Roundup

Challenge is going well. We have eaten wholegrain cereals every morning and wholegrain bread or rolls in the lunch boxes most days. We do tend to eat a variety of different breads so this wasn't too much of a change for us but I didn't buy any white bread at all. Although, my son did mention he prefers white bread toasted!! We had wholegrain pasta for dinner one night and no-one even noticed!! Wholegrain rice for dinner tonight.

Sorry about the sickness bugs – my DD2 had one over the weekend so hope it’s not related to her new wholegrain diet

OK so the first week has had it’s positives and a major negative in the name of my 17 year old son complaining ‘not wholemeal bread again!!.

His point is that after suffering from abdominal pains and diarrhoea for over 6 months and having recently been diagnosed as lactose intolerant (or at least that’s the most likely cause), white bread is one of the things he can eat and enjoy and I should not be denying him that pleasure! No amount of telling him about it’s nutritional benefits can make him see otherwise so I simply informed him that it’s what we are eating whether he liked it or not.

So now that’s out of the way how about the rest of us. Well it is going rather well actually, I have managed to eat wholegrain every day for breakfast and include it in every evening meal. I enjoyed the pasta and was very surprised by the brown rice. I have some recollection of eating it many moons ago and not liking it at all, so either my taste buds have changed or it wasn’t cooked right or I was just being picky. My daughters snack has also been wholegrain.

We have quinoa on the menu for later this week (have you seen the price of that stuff!!) and I hope we like it, I am looking for suggestions on how to add wholegrain to beef casserole (not cobbler) and bangers and mash please. I suppose I could always do an apple crumble for pudding with oaty crumble mmmmmmmmmmmmm

I’m not sure there has been any noticeable benefits other than that by Friday I realised that I wasn’t hungry and picking all day like I normally do, so that has to be a good thing.

Will report back again at the end of the week, so far so good.

Tried the cheesy scones yesterday - not very cheesy! I think they need a touch of salt (yes, I know, unhealthy) and more cheese. Used wholemeal flour which worked well though. Trying pork & apple & cider thing tomorrow night.

Yesterday made apple crumble with oats and almonds for topping - delicious.
DC had wholemeal toast and beans for supper.

So, having been on the challenge for a week, I've noticed:

I have more energy and want less food
DS1 and DH - no change

Best of all DS2 who usually eats lots of white bread has had none at all since the challenge started. he's eating less and he's far less moody. he's also not snacking or craving sugary treats. I'm guessing that this is because his blood sugar is stabler. It's a noticeable difference. Very welcome.

I am preferring the wholegrain toast and muesli, they definitely provide a more substantial breakfast.
Dh has not complained about having wholegrain bread sandwiches for his packed lunch !

Usual wholegrain breakfasts as previous posts, I had lentil salad with feta for lunch, dh added wholemeal couscous to his. We've been using that for a while now & find that if you fry fry it quickly in a v hot frying pan before adding the usual water or stock it has an even nuttier taste.

Tonight it's brown penne with Sicilian broccoli and lots of chilli. An back on track!

How do the rest of you find school dinners? Is it all white flour? Any whole grain at all? I'm struggling to think of anything that ds had at school last week to fit the criteria.

Nontester - I had a sorgum, corn and brown rice hot cereal this morning that I'd been putting off using as the cooking was a bit much for mornings. So I did it with almond milk overnight in the slow cooker, and it was lovely.

Have been using my slow cooker in rice cooker mode to produce more brown rice -the length of time to cook always put me off, but this one has a keep warm mode so I can sling it on at some point and then serve up at leisure. And quinoa 'risotto' is really nice

Thank you for the voucher.

I enjoyed my trip to tesco last weekend and spent longer than usual browsing through the aisles and actually looking at different options for the normal things that I buy.

The wholegrain items that I bought were:
Wholegrain bread
Wholegrain and fruit bagels
Wholegrain wraps
wholegrain penne pastsa
wholegrain fusili pasta
Wholegrain cereals (Musili, seriously cinnamons,porridge and Cherrios)
Wholegrain basmati rice
Wholegrain pitta

Some items were more expensive like the basmati rice but others were comparable.

So far in the challenge the DC have loved a weekend lunchtime treat of the wholegrain and fruit bagels which we served with low fat cream cheese.
Packed lunches have all been with wholegrain bread instead of 50/50 and we will be sticking with this as a family now.
The wholegrain cereal is normal in our household and no complaints there.

For evening meals we have replaced normal pasta with the wholegrain which has been met with differing opinions. The youngest DC finds it a bit more difficult to eat so it taking longer to eat it.
The wholegrain pitta went down well toasted, cut into strips and served with homemade goulash soup.

Still looking forward to chicken wraps and the basmati jambalaya so will report back soon.

We seem to eat a lot of whole grain anyway but have made some extra effort.
Haggis and tummy bugs here too.
Cranachan Is a scots pudding with cream, honey, whisky, raspberries and toasted oats. Yummy.
Tried the baked peaches recipe but dh had thrown the bread away so I made with toasted oats and it was nice. Also made apple crumble with oats and whole meal flour in the topping. The cranks vegetarian recipe books have lots if whole grain recipes in.
Dd is having Cheerios but am horrified how much sugar is in them.
Bread is almost always whole meal here anyway.

Now used my voucher (and then some......). Although we ordinarily by wholegrain cereal and bread, I went looking for a few more different things.
So I bought:
Wild rice (faints at cost)
Oat cakes (plain and chocolate chip - never new they did chocolate ones until someone mentioned them upthread)
Whole meal pasta - I normally buy wholemeal spaghetti, and sometimes penne when on offer. It is more expensive that white, and the bags are much smaller (I normally buy the 3kg bags) so I think I will continue to mix with white.
Toddler loved the (chocolate) oat cakes - will try him with the plain next. Am going to cook the wild rice all at once, then freeze and add to meals whenever we have rice.

Another one for the breakfast being the easiest way to get wholegrains into the diet of both me and my son. I WISH he would eat porridge...but he won´t.....I love the stuff! However he quite happily wolfs down a bowl of Shreddies....which he has convinced himself are "Chocolate cereal"...and no I have not been doctoring them! They are the plain Shreddies! He has seemed completely unaffected by the swap in the sense that he has not refused any of it. If anything I guess I was the one dreading brown bread etc....but actually I have found that I am starting to almost prefer it...which makes sense as I prefer brown pasta and rice anyway. Without going into TMI territory too much...I do think that it is helping my digestion....which is most encouraging....and as others have said I am not finding that I feel bloated really in the way that white carbs can sometimes make you feel. Also I do feel fuller from the wholegrain alternatives.

I definitely think we will be sticking with the changes even after the challenge is over...the health benefits are unquestionably there. The price thing is a bit of a shame....but there again things like brown rice are easy enough, brown flour to make own bread/pizza dough etc. The cereal and porridge are easy as mentioned.

We normally watch a movie together on a Friday night and have popcorn...so I reckon we might just make home made popcorn

Starting new week of challenge, off to a great start, made some pancake batter mix last night but with wholewheat flour, and it was just as quick to be honest to cook up a batch this morning as it was to do a round of toast or messing on with whichever cereal the kids want since they all seem to go for different ones. Opted for sliced banana and syrup or honey topping. For supper tonight, experimented with risotto but used half risotto rice and half pearl barley, added cooked onion and mushroom, some thyme, some veg stock and Parmesan at the end, and it was amazing. Couldn't really tell there was barley in it, kids lapped it up and asked for seconds then thirds! Pudding didn't work out quite right though, made what was called guilt-free flapjacks, no sugar, just honey, flour, rolled oats, fresh raspberries and chopped nuts, with an egg. Didn't quite taste as nice as it sounded so I'm afraid I turned it into millionaire's flapjacks by adding the caramel and chocolate, which made it more edible!! Gonna try a good old curry tomorrow but with brown basmati rice, really liking the brown rice, now prefer it to white.

we've managed wholegrain cous cous and quinoa this week so that was great. We used as an alternative to potatoes. I also bought some new crackers with wholegrain in - they tasted amazing!

school dinners?

with free school dinners next year (if libdems keep their promise) I have the decision of whether to allow ds to have them. cost, well it would save money, but the nutritional content is not that desirable. ds would choose the least healthy option possible.