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)

Thanks for the voucher, today i bought some wholemeal rolls, some brown rice, wholewheat fusilli and some oat clusters for cereal.

Brown rice and wholewheat are a completely new thing to me and was very excited at buying them!

We tend to occasionally buy wholegrain rolls and cereals anyway as we do enjoy them.

Im not entirely sure of the health benefits regarding wholegrains but i do feel more pleased with myself when me and my daughter have these!!

I had a browse on the website at the recipe ideas and the meatballs in wraps looked appealing to me and i will definitely be having a go at those over the 2 weeks!

Today i have had wholemeal rolls for lunch - will definitely be using them for lunchboxes tomorrow too!
We also had brown rice with our meal this evening and it went down a treat, it tasted great and i was pleasantly surprised at how well my 8 year old enjoyed her meal - she can be a right fussy bugger at times!

Thank you for the voucher. I read what others had bought on the thread before shopping myself. So thank you to them too!

I bought yesterday: Weetabix, Sunbites, brown rice, rye crackers, wholemeal bagels, wholemeal bread and sandwich thins.
Tonight we had wholemeal sandwich thins and made homemade pizzas out of them. Delicious! We all enjoyed them.
Tomorrow I'm doing a curry with brown rice. DD normally turns her nose up at 'brown' food and esp. seeded type brown bread so I'm hoping I can change her mind with some tasty ideas. Enjoying the challenge - thank you!

Our family is vegan so none of the recipes in the booklet were relevant to us. I had a look at the website and saw that there was a "vegetarian" category you could choose to sort recipes but no "vegan" category. I have access to lots of recipes and have a meal plan for the next few weeks so didn't bother looking through the recipes to see if any of them were vegan or possible to make vegan.

Today I made a casserole in the slow cooker with "chicken style" soya pieces and added the dried soup mix with barley, etc in it and also some rye flakes which it says on the pack can be used as a thickener. I think I underestimated how much the soup mix would swell up and put rather a lot in! My daughter hates things like casserole and so didn't touch it, she did try it but I think she had already decided she wouldn't like it (but ate the mash and veg) but my husband and I enjoyed it and agreed that it was filling enough that we will have leftovers with veg tomorrow without the mash. So that's pretty good.

I baked the wholemeal cinnamon and banana muffins today, they were gorgeous and didn't survive beyond lunchtime. I'm trying wholemeal scones tomorrow.

I have made, and frozen, peanut breakfast bars....which are flapjacks really. The kids have them in packed lunches every day, so it's another portion in. They are packed with oats and mixed seeds, honey and brown sugar and butter

We had brown rice and salmon kedgeree last night, when we usually have white rice and white fish. Didn't go down too well, but DS2 is ill and DS one objected to the salmon not the rice.

Bubble - where do you live that the school allows peanuts? We'd be practically expelled for bringing anything peanutty into school.

We are enjoying this challenge, and have found it remarkably easy to switch from white bread to wholemeal, and to use wholemeal pasta and brown rice instead - we just needed the push!
I made chilli (with lots of various beans and far less meat) with brown rice - it takes longer to cook, but has a wonderful "nutty"taste.
We have also had a pasta bake with wholemeal pasta - couldn't really taste any difference in that one, so definitely a winner.
The kids have grumbled a bit about there only being wholemeal and seeded bread in the house - but they have eaten it, and it will be all I will buy from now on.
We also have wholemeal pitta for snacks, stuffed with grated cheese, ham, salad, etc, my DS normally has these straight after school to keep him going until dinner time.
We usually have porridge or muesli for breakfast anyway, delicious with a glug of maple syrup!
I was aware of the benefits of eating more wholemeal, I just needed to take a stand on it - if that is all that is in the house then it will become the norm (tho' the teenages will probably binge on white bread at friends houses!)
One thing I have bought from the recipe suggestions was quinoa, which I haven't used before. We do eat a lot of couscous, is it similar? Lamb burgers in pitta from the recipe book for dinner tonight

We had wholegrain muesli for breakfast this morning - it tasted delicious and somehow feels more "filling"

last night was wholewheat pasta, veggies and chicken in whitesauce.

the children have had popcorn, ds took his for lunch, dd chose to eat hers last night.

yesterday we had:

shreddies and apple for breakfast
egg and bacon on wholemeal muffins for lunch
hummus and cheese on sunflower bread (lidl's finest, we go through a lot of that) as a snack
chicken casserole with red rice for dinner

casseroles seem to be pretty popular but then they're dead easy to make and lovely comfy winter food. speaking of which, tonight it's carrot soup because i got a massive bag of carrots really cheap. to thicken it i'll propaly try and add farro instead of potatoes.

so many of you have mentioned that wholegrain stuff is supposed to fill you up quicker. i wasn't aware of that! and i dread to think about the amounts DH and DS would put away if we had white bread etc.

I didn't get selected, but thought I'd try more wholegrains anyway. Was pleasantly surprised when I realised we actually eat far more wholegrain than I originally thought e.g. all the breakfast cereals are wholegrain. We had already swapped to wholegrain pasta/rice for evening meals.

We had tired on and off. My husband love it but not my children. It is too dry and hard for them to shallow. Hopefully when they get older, they could try them.

My tip for incorporating some wholegrain bread, if your children aren't keen, is to make it in to French toast. I just beat an egg with a dash of milk, soak both sides of a slice of wholegrain, then fry for a minute both sides. They love it with cinnamon or jam for breakfast

Whilst I never took part in The Challenge I have moved over to using Wholewheat pasta and bread,I am finding that with the bread used in the mornings for breakfast that my hunger does not now creep through until early afternoon as opposed previously to late morning so am tempted not to nibble before lunch,the pasta has gone down well with both OH and the rest of the family so I will be adding more wholewheat to my menu's a lot more from now on.Thanks glamma

Didn't really think much about whole grain before this thread started and apart from whole grain bread & breakfast cereals hadn't taken much notice of which foods contained it. However, have my eyes and ears open now in supermarket! Have given kids the chance to spot as many things as possible with it in when we go shopping together & they've quite enjoyed the challenge while teaching them healthy eating habits too.

Whole grain pasta and rice have been our main switch (already used wholegrain bread and breakfast cereals most of the time) and all of us agree they are tastier than the white varieties. Have also started to put whole grain crisp-type snacks into kids' packed lunches and they've gone down well. I love quinoa and have made a Greek salad to go with some of this for mine & hubbie's lunches and was delicious. I haven't tried any of the recipes yet but intend to as seems to be easier than I thought to convert my brood.

I've noticed that stay fuller for longer- a bonus from when was fishing around for any biscuits about an hour after my usual white bread sandwich lunch. Think it's a change we'll stick with.

We went whole grains a few years back, and we LOVE it! But some top tips:

1. Buy a half loaf of bread starting out. Whole wheat is much more filling than that white stuff, you may only need one piece for your breakfast, etc.

1. Drink lots of water! You're putting actual nutrients into your body, you want them to get to your various cells as efficiently as possible.

1. Sometimes kids can be thrown by the texture. Introduce whole grain into their favorite dishes - once they figure out that it's just fine in the thing they love, they'll be more willing to try it in less favored meals. Whole grain lasagna is....OM NOM NOM.

1. Don't get discouraged when they complain about it being 'different'. Persistence is key. After a few weeks, they won't notice the difference, and after a few months, they'll complain when they have to eat that yucky refined stuff!

White bread makes me sleepy. Wholegrain rice and pasta have more flavour and I prefer them, as does dh. Toddler ds also very happy with them so I usually buy Wholegrain versions - I just find that my small local Co-op and Aldi often only have white versions which can be annoying. We definitely incorporate Wholegrain foods into one or more snacks/meals a day and I am aware that they are a better option than the white versions.

We have had a second day with added wholegrain goodness!
This is how we got on on day 2...

Wholegrain Goodness Challenge - Day 2

Breakfast

I kept the twins with their usual breakfast of wheat biscuits and bananas. I do not want to add too much wholegrain in one go for them. I feel that as they are younger it should be increased a little at a time.
Joseph and hubby started the day with a bowl of Shreddies!
As for me, well I had my usual coffee!

Lunch

The twins had some of the beef in creamy mustard sauce with wholegrain rice that I cooked last night and they loved it!
Hubby had his wholemeal bread sandwiches and a piece of wholemeal cinnamon and honey cake.
I had a wholemeal bread sandwich along with a bag of wholegrain Sunbites.

Dinner

Last night I made a wholegrain cottage pie. I used my regular recipe of minced beef steak, onions, mushrooms, kale, sweetcorn, tinned tomatoes, beef stock and Worcester sauce. However yesterday I added 100g of pearl barley. Firstly I cooked the pearl barley in vegetable stock for 45 minutes and the added it to my cottage pie mix to finish cooking. I topped the meat with a sweet and white potato mash covered with oats and cheese. I finished the dish off by grilling until the cheese had melted and the top was crispy.
This was the first time that I have used pearl barley in my cooking but I will definitely be using it again. We all loved what it added to the dish and the cheesy oat topping gave it a crispy finish!

?I have posted a pic of our delicious meal on Hijacked By Twins Wholegrain Goodness Challenge Day 2

Day 2 Results

Twins - 2 wholegrain servings
Joseph - 2 wholegrain servings
Hubby - 4 wholegrain servings
Me - 3 wholegrain servings

Another successful wholegrain day has been had here!

Non-tester's feedback: I often buy the wholegrain bread, my older son prefers it to white bread when I serve it as a toast with spreads. I have recently discovered LivLife bread.

When making meatballs and cutlets from minced meat, I often soak the wholegrain bread in milk, then add to the meat mix for the extra texture and fibre.
As we have a bread machine, I do love baking bread with wholemeal flour. The aroma of the freshly baked bread is fantastic, and it tastes great.
Wholemeal flour is also lovely in pancakes and blini.
Not very keen on wholegrain pasta, we tried many varieties, and were not impressed with any (both dried and fresh).

Just wondering what is the criteria to be selected as a tester? All food tests that I applied seem to be passing by.

My teenager loves white bread - which I find horrible. I did try making bread with her to show her what we could put in. It's hard work and she gets harder and harder to persuade!

I have started buying and eating more whole grain, in breads, cereals, for the kids half and half bread and our favourites weetabix, I have issues with my tummy and IBS, Whole Grain is really starting to help. I have bought the ingredients in ready to make the Thai Turkey Burgers in Wholemeal Baps. I feel I am making a real difference for my family making this change

sorry I did not get chosen for wholegrain challenge. will try any way.bought brown rice,pitta bread always have brown bread anyway.will try to really up our game with rivtas.trying prridge for breakfast. costs more that is only snag ,our upping our fruit and veg as well so we should lose weight, but going through more toilet rolls (TMI).cereal is any easy option ,so far so good .

Me and my my family (partner and 2 young children) eat whole grain bread, and sainsburys have their own label one that is under a pound and lasts for longer the a normal bread. We also eat whole wheat pasta, I thought there would be a big difference in taste to regular pasta but to be honest I couldn't really tell the difference. I am going to definitely be switching some more products for whole grain ones. I've seen bagels I'd like to try There is a big difference in price though, whole grain is more expensive, which may out people off.

Day 3 of the challenge:

Made chicken briyani( a type of fried rice) with brown rice.

Love the nutty feeling of brown rice and brown rice is more filling than White rice.

Still doing well with the wholemeal bread sandwiches in lunchboxes. I also bought some sandwich thins which DD2 liked more as she finds ordinary sandwiches too filling.

Tonight DH used a bread mix (wholemeal) as a base for pizzas which apparently went down a treat. I'm going to do a tagine with the couscous tomorrow.