Get your grains!

Source: Adapted from Low Calorie Cookbook, Reader’s Digest; Cook Smart for a Healthy Heart, Reader’s Digest

test The Canada Food Guide recommends five to 12 servings of grain products daily. For some, that means an awful lot of refined bread, rice and pasta. Here are some creative ways to add some beneficial whole grains into your diet instead.

Bulgur Wheat and Prawn Salad

• Bulgur wheat is a good source of starchy carbohydrate, dietary fibre, and B vitamins, as it contains all the particularly nutritious outer layers of the grain except the bran itself.
• This meal is also a good source of vitamin B12, niacin, copper, iron, B1, C, E, potassium, selenium and zinc.

Preparation time: 20 to 25 minutes
Serves: 4

Cajun-Spiced Barley

• Barley is a grain rich in soluble fibre, the type of fibre that can bind the end-products of cholesterol metabolism and sweep them out of the body. When the outer bran and germ are removed to make pearl barley, there is some loss of vitamins, particularly thiamine.
• This meal also has 0 mg of cholesterol.

Preparation time: 1 hour 10 minutes
Serves: 4

Herbed Polenta with Gorgonzola

• Like wheat and other grains, corn (from which polenta is made) is rich in starchy carbohydrate and low in fat. Gorgonzola is a semi-hard, blue-veined cheese with a rich, full flavour, while ricotta is much milder, and lower in fat. Mixing the two cheeses together helps to keep the total fat content of this dish in a healthy range.

Preparation time: 40 minutes, plus 1 hour cooling
Serves: 4

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