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)

Breakfast: oat & blueberry muffin, granary toast & boiled egg for ds, dh makes his own muesli out of oats, seeds etc

Lunch: ds has whole meal pitta sandwiches & soup, I had left over lasagne at home, ds has school dinners so it's unlikely there'll be anything whole meal there!

Snack: I have made the seeded cheese scones in the booklet and they are sooooooo good. I added a little pinch of cayenne for extra cake. I was surprised at how light the texture is. We didn't have rapeseed oil so had to get some.

Dinner: planning cauliflower cheese made with whole meal flour for the sauce & seeds sprinkled on the top, jackets pots, sardine bake & to make it more whole foody I'll use oats as a sort if crumble on the top.

That should say extra kick not cake! Although cake would be nice!

Black-eyed Susan - I bought some oatmeal in Booths. Don't know if you have them where you live. I add it to loads of things including pizza base!

I found these two recipes which may help people
www.goodtoknow.co.uk/recipes/528655/quinoa-crunchies

www.goodtoknow.co.uk/recipes/386773/Jo-Pratt-s-quinoa--feta---broccoli-salad

Today I baked oat and raisin cookies with wholemeal flour, they are superb. I thoroughly recommend giving them a go, they are quick and easy and fantastic for dunking!

For dinner tonight we are having homemade wholemeal seeded bread and soup! Porridge is going down great for breakfast too!

I'm a bit confused about rapeseed oil - is this part of the wholegrain challenge? How is it wholegrain? Or am I missing something...!?

What's your recipe, NicNak71?

We had homemade oaty bread at lunchtime - normal white bread with 75g of the flour replaced by oats. It makes the texture and taste better.

Yes Pants the rapeseed is part of it according to the booklet. NicNak71 I would love the cookie recipe please

DS & DH both loved the cheese scones things. A resounding success.

We only buy wholegrain bread. We have whoegrain breakfast cereals. We make flapjack for a treat. We buy and use a lot of brown pasta, rice, tortillas, etc. We think we're doing quite well. I like the taste, but just occasionally, in a café I'll have something on white bread/toast or a burger in a white bun and enjoy it. And of course French bread is a different matter!!

Spicy quorn in wraps went down well. Then they had another wrap each with melted cheese! Growing teens. They also had crisp rolls with peanut butter as an after school snack.

They seem to be craving far less sweet stuff. And I'm definitely eating less because it's more filling. That's after five days of switching over. Interesting.

Non tester. We've started making slow cooker porridge - water in slow cooker, gf oats and almond milk in a bowl with a lid - and its really, really nice. If I could get steel cut gf oats I'd use those.
Will be trying a buckwheat/millet/ quinoa porridge tonight

oat dumplings

I tried these oat dumplings. they were a faff to cook and certainly took more than the prepartion time, and I have more washing up than normal. they did fall apart a bit too. they took longer than 3 minutes to cook too. I s extremely pissed off when I sat down to eat them.... (disclaimer, I may be a tad hormonal) they were delicious though.

I fiddled about with the sauce too using garlic in tinned tomtoes and adding frozen peppers and peas to the mix.( it needs to be a sustainable in our house recipe. )

Had a go at porridge for lunch, I couldn't fit in whetabix this morning, so had toast - but I wanted to use the porridge I had made overnight. Worked surprisingly well as a lunch, actually. Could be a solution for days when I'm fed up of bread. Dinner was salmon and the last of the rice, and tomorrow I'm finally getting around to cooking something properly from scratch, probably a quinoa based concoction, as I've been putting that off as it seems too far removed from my normal cooking...

Doing well with porridge in the mornings. We usually have wholemeal rolls and wholegrain ryvita but don't do as well with main meals. Reading the thread, might try brown rice with our veggie chilli.

its all about porridge for lunch! I LOVE this! its easy and because I have it with a few dates or raisins chucked in I always feel like a kid getting away with having a dessert for her lunch!

ds did not like the dumplings and refused to eat them. I made some fresh sauce for him and pulverised dumplings into it... it seems to be going down!

thanks for all the amazing feedback so far...and recipes!

sassolino - sorry you weren't picked - folks were selected to meet the criteria for this one and then pretty much at random and the tests do tend to get over subscribed. Please do keep applying for things and you'll get picked soon I am sure...

~ Let us know what you think of wholegrains and if you knew about the benefits already or not
I knew they were better for you but not really if it made that much difference.

~ Have you tried out any WholegrainGoodness.com recipes? How did you and your family find them?
Not yet, have got the ingredients but waiting to pounce them on DS without him realising they are new. However we have had normal flapjack, 50/50 bread and wholegrain cereals so far.

~ 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
We tried swapping from white bread to granary but DS1 refused to eat so we have settled at 50/50 which he happily chomps down and I think is a good compromise.

Friday is toasted sandwich day at school for my kids- they usually have a packed lunch but today they have money for the canteen. I have requested that they ask for wholemeal bread but have a sneaky feeling they'll go for white.

Dinner tonight will be pork casserole with wholegrain mustard and brown rice. I'm planning to slowcook a fruit porridge ready for tomorrow too.

Am I right thinking digestive biscuits and hobnobs are whole grain?

We have now completed four days of the wholegrain goodness challenge.
I have noticed that I am feeling bloated less often but the hubby has been having some stomach pains. But he does have a sensitive digestive system and suffers with excess acid. However during the last couple of days he has been having more than the recommended 3 servings. So we are going to cut down his servings and I am going to make a loaf of bread using half white flour and half wholemeal flour to see if this helps.
Here's how we did on day 4...

Wholegrain Goodness Challenge - Day 4

Breakfast

Yet again the twins had their usual breakfast, however I am going to start giving them Shreddies over the weekend now that their little tummy's have got used to the increase of wholegrain.
Joseph and hubby had some Shreddies.
Even I had a late breakfast of wholemeal toast.

Lunch

The twins enjoyed the last of the cottage pie from the other day.
As I am still not 100% I have not got much of an appetite. But whenever I am feeling ill the one food that I can always eat is crisps, luckily I have some wholegrain Sunbites so I did have my serving of wholegrain!
Hubby had a homemade wholemeal bread sandwich and also took the last of the wholemeal cinnamon and honey cake as a snack.

Dinner

I wanted to make an easy dinner today. So I bought some casserole steak as I can put it in the slow cooker and leave it for the day. I was going to make a stew but remembered that this week I had not bought any root vegetables so I gave it a twist. I made a Mediterranean style stew with red onions, red peppers, courgettes, tomatoes, garlic, potatoes, herbs, spices, wholegrain brown rice and pearl barley. As this had been in the slow cooker all day the twins enjoyed a bowl of stew with a little added wholegrain brown rice for their dinner.

Day 4 - Results

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

Unfortunately, with Joseph having school dinners, he is only getting 2 of his recommended 3 servings a day. I am going to bake some wholegrain muffins so that he can have one as his after school snack so that he getting the serving that he is currently missing.

Hijacked By Twins Wholegrain Goodness Challenge Day 4

My Mediterranean Stew with wholegrain brown rice recipe
Hijacked By Twins Mediterranean Stew