Whole Grain Goodness Challenge feedback thread - chance to win supermarket gift cards! NOW CLOSED

[PoppyMumsnet]

Here's what WholeGrainGoodness.com, a not-for-profit campaign aiming to inspire people to eat more whole grain, 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 high fibre foods are also an important part of a healthy, balanced diet? The dietary recommendation for adults is that we should aim for at least 30g of fibre a day; but currently only manage, on average, about 18g. Whole grains are a great source of fibre and so public health advice is to base our meals on starchy carbohydrate foods, and to choose whole grain varieties where possible.

So try something different for your new year's diet resolutions this year – take part in our whole grain challenge, involve your family too if you can, and add your feedback here to be entered into a prize draw."

Here's what's involved:
~ Official testers (those already selected by MNHQ) who add a comment here between Monday 6 February and Sunday 26 February can win a £250 supermarket voucher

~ Non-official testers (open to all UK MNers) who add a comment here between Monday 6 February and Sunday 26 February can win a £150 supermarket voucher

• The challenge is to include whole grains / whole grain foods in at least ONE meal or snack per day for two weeks and tell us what you think by adding your feedback here. Involve your family too if you can.

According to Wholegraingoodness.com:

"There’s so much variety available to choose from, such as wholemeal breads, flours, rolled oats, whole grain breakfast cereals, rye crackers. Even popcorn is a whole grain food! Perhaps try going half-and-half, like mixing white with wholemeal flour in baking, wild rice with white rice or brown pasta with white pasta. If you already eat lots of whole grain, feel free to take part in the challenge too, as we’d like to know what you think also, to help us inspire others to eat more delicious and nutritious whole grains.

"If you have any questions about whole grains go to WholeGrainGoodness.com and check out the Guide to Whole Grain pages and the FAQs, or use the Contact Us form. To help you get cooking with whole grains, try these delicious Recipes created by professional home economists and dietitians, designed to show that healthy eating doesn’t have to be boring – it can be surprisingly good!"

Please add your feedback below on the following:
~ Let us know what you think of whole grains / whole grain foods 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, photos, recipes, tips or ideas you have too – we'd love to hear from you at various stages of the challenge.

Thanks
MNHQ

Closing date: Sunday 26 February. Winners will be selected at random from all posting a comment: one ‘official’ tester and one ‘non-official’ tester – prizes as above.

Please note: posts on this thread may be reproduced by Whole Grain Goodness (AHDB).

I dont normally eat a lot of bread but having read some of the posts and seeing what people were buying I did buy some of the rye hot cross buns and they were delightful. I would definately choose them again and happy to keep them in my shopping basket. Nice to find new things to try!

Sorry for being slow to give feedback, we've enjoyed doing the challenge. As you can see from the picture I managed to get a lot of food with my voucher! (I think everything pictured came to about £12). I had thought that wholegrain options would be more expensive but was surprised how many offers were on.

Let us know what you think of whole grains / whole grain foods and if you knew about the benefits already or not.
I was already aware that wholegrains were a good thing but not specifically why, so having a browse through the WholeGrainGoodness website was interesting. We were already having a lot of wholegrain breakfast cereals and bread, so the crux of the challenge for me was to find more options for snacks and lunch/dinner. This challenge has definitely made me more aware of the range of wholegrain foods easily available and I'll be incorporating more into our diets from now on.

Have you tried out any WholeGrainGoodness.com recipes? How did you and your family find them?
I'm sorry but I have to admit that we didn't, we were a chicken pox household and we're having work done to our house so things have been a bit chaotic. But what I think was most interesting to me from the challenge was that I've discovered that eating more wholegrains doesn't need to involve massively changing our menu choices, it's more about substituting wholegrain options instead. So where we would have had white or brown rice we swapped to wholegrain, the Uncle Ben's/Tilda ranges do some nice flavoured ones. And instead of white wraps with lunch we had wholemeal, instead of crackers we had ryvita etc etc. I even found some Organix wholegrain biscuity type things and Sunbites instead of regular crisps as snacks.

Please add any other comments, photos, recipes, tips or ideas you have too – we'd love to hear from you at various stages of the challenge.
We've enjoyed the challenge, and am now consciously looking for wholegrain versions of foods we regularly buy, and trying to work wholegrains into dinners as much as possible. This can only be a good thing.

Thank you for the opportunity to take part.

We really enjoyed this challenge, I found as a family we didn't have a huge amount of wholegrain foods so we swapped to brown bread, we got some oats, brown rice, wholegrain pasta, bran flakes and various snacks like wholegrain crisps.

My daughter (7) was looking forward to trying the new foods, my son (9) was very apprehensive as he has slight issues with the texture of foods.

We enjoyed all the breakfasts we had, brown bread toast, porridge, bran flakes and oat pancakes and we look forward to trying many more!

For dinners we had brown bread sandwiches in packed lunches, whole grain wraps and whole grain snacks, most of these went down really well although we will probably swap and change brands etc until we find things we all really love.

For teas we tried a couple of the recipes (flat bread pizza, pasta) the kids adored the pizzas so they are definitely going to be a regular tea here, they weren't too keen on brown rice but then neither was me and my partner, whole grain pasta was ok but being a different texture my son didn't like it at all unfortunately. Being vegetarian myself though I found there wasn't a vast amount of recipes to choose from.

During the whole challenge I found myself constantly checking labels in shops and really thinking about what I was putting into meals to make sure we were having wholegrain, on the whole we all thoroughly enjoyed the challenge and found several meals which will definitely be regulars in our house! We also found we felt fuller for longer and actually had snacks left over which is unheard of!!

Thank you for the gift card and for choosing us to take part in the whole grain challenge we really enjoyed it!!! You've definitely changed how we eat and shop as a family. Thank you!

I eat wholegrains a lot anyway, we have porridge for breakfast regularly and wholegrain bread. Eating wholegrain food makes me feel fuller for longer.
I didn't try any recipes from the website because there were only 2 vegan recipes - one is a pudding and we don't eat puddings, the other looked quite boring.

Official tester here - thanks for choosing me for this survey! I had been meaning to do an overhaul of our diet anyway.

Q.1 - We do eat a lot of wholegrains already. In fact, I discovered that we are pretty much at 'peak wholegrain' - I found it hard to cram in any more. We all eat a wholegrain breakfast every day (porridge, muesli etc). I always buy wholemeal bread and pittas (unless something specific like a baguette). We have wholegrain snacks - rice cakes, oat cakes, Ryvita etc. We usually have wholegrain pasta (sometimes have tricolore instead), and for some meals we have wholegrain rice (I like it, the others prefer white, so we compromise). I use wholemeal flour for everything except pancakes (I think family would rebel if I tried that).

Q.2 - I had a quick flick through the recipes but wasn't inspired by anything (there wasn't much for vegetarians).

Q.3 - As I said above, the thing I discovered is that we are already at peak wholegrain. I really had to rack my brains to think of something new to try (looked at buckwheat etc but it was so expensive I wouldn't incorporate it into the diet on a regular basis, so didn't try it).

I tried wholemeal tortillas (or what I thought were wholemeal tortillas - some creative labelling there, as they were a mix of wholemeal and white flour ). Anyway, the family didn't like them - and looking at the ingredients they weren't any better than the corn ones we have (which I suppose are also 'partly wholegrain').

A surprising hit was JS wholemeal hot cross buns - delicious hot or cold and we all enjoyed them so they will stay. Different from white buns but just as tasty.

I reminded myself how much I like JS mini wheats, so will get them again regularly.

We made wholemeal chapattis - very nice but would have to get into the habit of making them (a bit of a faff when you're not used to it).

I bought popcorn but did not get round to making it... I find that's the main challenge with anything different. I will do it though, as I know dc would like it.

To be honest, I found this challenge a lot easier than I expected.
There are so many easy wholegrain versions of almost everything I use.
In all honesty, I haven't felt that much of a difference, however, I am going to keep going. Making little changes at a time for a healthier lifestyle!

Really half I took on this challenge! Fave meal was a Nigel Slater recipe with mushrooms, cracked wheat, butter, stock, garlic and not much else. Absolutely delish! Thanks so much for the prompt ;)

Thanks for this. We do already eat whole grains everyday, so I tweaked it to increase how much we have everyday.

It was good to try some new products. Everything went down well! Wholewheat noodles for stir fry were a particular hit with DD, she also preferred wholemeal pitta to white. We also had brown rice with chilli, which worked really well. I ate more breakfast cereal as the result of doing the challenge, and felt the better for having a "proper" breakfast.

Ps no, we haven't tried the recipes, but will take a look.

I'm aware that whole grains are healthier, I guess they have a worthy, stodgy image, but I find that a lot of whole grain food seems tastier. Forgot we also switched to whole grain crisp type snacks, they were lovely!

I'm an official tester by the way!

Official tester here, chipping in at the end of the challenge

Let us know what you think of whole grains / whole grain foods and if you knew about the benefits already or not.

Yes, I already knew of the benefits of wholegrain foods. Most of the time, I do tend to go for a wholegrain option (over a more processed one) - I have recently lost 4 stone with Slimming World and try to eat healthily, but it's difficult because DH just won't eat wholemeal bread (having not been allowed white bread at home as a child). I have porridge at least once a week - more in winter, as well as overnight oats for breakfast probably once a week too.

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

No, I found the website really clunky and difficult to search properly on. The functionality really wasn't there for me to be able to search within the sections (and the "show all" button didn't lead to seeing all recipes!)

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

For me, it's easiest to do wholegrains for breakfast and as snacks. It's so easy to make porridge, or overnight oats, or even just unwrap two Shredded Wheat. For snacks, I tend to go for Ryvita with cottage cheese, or some oatcakes and cheese, or popcorn. DH will eat quinoa and cous cous but not wholemeal pasta (again, because he had no choice growing up) so there's no point me buying it for just me. He also won't eat wholemeal bread if there's white available, but will go for the 50:50 stuff, so I tend to buy that if I can although I do use the fib that the shop didn't have his preferred white brand

I already enjoy wholegrain foods, but my kids are not as interested as id like so I loved this challenge. Since the challenge they now enjoy porridge with honey and banana for breakfast, homemade lemon, oat and raison flapjacks and wholemeal bread for sandwiches.
We tried the fat free tea loaf recipe from the website and really loved them. my husband takes them to work with him now! We also tried the oat coated fishfingers. They were better than I thought, next time with try half oats, half wholemeal flour. Thank you for the challenge as my kids and husband have now started to enjoy wholemeal/wholegrain foods as much as I do!

A message from WholegrainGoodness.com :

“Thanks to everyone who has taken part in the Whole Grain Goodness challenge, including non-official testers who added their feedback.

It has been so helpful to hear about your experiences. We’ve really enjoyed reading your posts and seeing your photos – and we’ve learnt lots! Thank you

Congratulations to the two lucky winners who’ll be announced shortly and sent their prizes – enjoy!

We hope the Whole Grain Goodness challenge has inspired you! Please do help us to tell others about the benefits of whole grains too.

We'll keep working on our website. Look out for new blogs, recipes, competitions and more – and feel free to sign up for our news alerts!”

Congratulations @BurnTheBlackSuit (tester) and @Anononoo (non-tester) - enjoy your supermarket vouchers!