I’m wondering how good rye is for you, nutritionally speaking.
Is the rye flour used in baking bread a whole-grain flour, or is it typically refined, like white wheat flour?
If it is a whole grain, is it used in significant amounts in most rye breads?
All grains are whole grain. Therefore, rye is a whole grain, unless you are using “whole grain” in some kind of flaky fashion I’ve never heard of before.
Rye is a cereal grass, related to wheat, and, like wheat, it’s considered whole grain unless the bran and germ have been removed (i.e., the grain has been refined). Arrowhead Mills sells a specifically whole grain rye flour. Most other rye doesn’t specifically state it’s whole grain, so I can’t say for sure if other rye breads / flours are made with whole grain rye, or if they’re refined.
Regarding bread, the amount of rye flour in breads varies depending on the recipe. Some are all rye, some are a ratio of 1/1 rye/white flour, others are a mix of rye/whole wheat/white, but the ratio & types of flours used with the rye really varies from one bread to the next. You can generally “guesstimate” how much rye is in the bread by how dark it is - light rye bread is a minimum of 30% rye flour to white flour (generic supermarket stuff), while the really dark breads, like pumpernickel, are all rye flour with whole rye grains.
As to the nutritional value of rye, Dark Rye flour is about as nutritious as Whole Wheat flour, with Light Rye flour being the least nutritious of the three types.