What's the deal with whole grains?

I want to lose weight and eat healthier, so I decide to try eating whole wheat bread instead of white bread. My understanding is that for the same amount of total substance, the whole wheat bread should have fewer calories, because some of that substance is now fiber rather than carbs, right? Well, I go to the bread aisle in Shop-Rite, look at the nuritional data on the whole wheat and the white - exactly the same calories, same calories from fat, even the fiber is negligible - only 1 gram per serving of the whole wheat!

The same shopping trip got me similar results with rice - Uncle Ben’s “Whole Grain Brown Rice” has just as many calories per serving as the white! (and yes, the serving sizes are the same for the two varieties)

So what gives? Are whole grains better for weight loss at all, or healthier only for other reasons? And what are those other reasons?

Well, the whole grains will have, by volume, less of the starchy center and more of the rest of the grain, which will contain a small amount of fat (like, 3g in a bowl of oatmeal, for example). That will decrease (the starch) and then increase (the fat) the calorie content. It’s still better for you, though. The fat and the fiber will help to fill you up faster and keep you full longer.

Something I’ve heard people say is that “whole wheat” is not as good as “whole grain.”

And if you really want to get down to weight loss in a no-nonsense way, I’d suggest cutting out all baked goods altogether, and eat cooked whole grains instead.

1 gram of fiber per slice for true whole wheat bread seems low to me. Are you sure it wasn’t just wheat bread? Not that it will be much higher, maybe 2-3 grams per slice. Still, when I look at the amount of fiber I’m supposed to be getting, passing up 4 or so grams on a sandwich seems to put me well behind the curve.

The main difference I find with whole grains is that, for the same amount of calories, they are more filling. That half-cup serving the Food Pyramid talks about really is enough.

I’m not aware of what Sattua is talking about. IME whole wheat is as good as whole grain. But just because something says “wheat” doesn’t mean it is whole wheat. For a lot of supermarket bread, “wheat” just means “brownish.”

My guess is that the bread you were looking at had a label something like this:

Made With
100% Whole Wheat!

This doesn’t mean that 100% of the flour used is whole wheat, it means that there is some 100% whole wheat flour in the bread. The rest is probably white flour.

Specifically this means, per FDA labeling laws, that the bread contains enough whole wheat to reach the standards they set of “good source” - that is, 10 to 19% of the Daily Value. For fiber, that’s, I think, 1.5-2 grams per serving. It might be as low as 1, due to rounding. (The Daily Value of Fiber is 11.5 grams per 1000 calories, but I’m not sure what total calorie number is used to figure out the total for labels. Anywhere from 1500-2000 is reasonable.)

Some whole wheat or whole grain breads provide a lot more. One of the best I’ve found is the Whole Wheat bread from Aldi, which packs a whopping 3 grams of fiber in each slice, yet still has a soft texture. That’s actually more fiber than most of the crunchy granola health foods breads. The only one I’ve seen with more is Arnold Natural Flax and Fiber bread, which has 4 grams, but also tastes like hippie.

ETA: OH, right, GQ. Cites. Here we go:
This FDA site has definitions of “Good Source” and “Made With”.
And this one the Daily Values for various nutrients, including fiber.

The FDA labeling information for calories determines total calories in a sample by bomb calorimetry (not as fun as it sounds, trust me), and subtracts the amount of fat and protein as determines in separate tests. I think it’s an extraction with hexane for the fats followed by gravitometric analysis, and a Kjeldahl nitrogen to determine proteins. The calories produced by carbohydrates are the difference, Total Calories - Fat Calories - Protein Calories = Carbohydrate Calories.

The fiber in whole grains is measured as providing energy, because in the bomb calorimeter it is combusted. This is not the case in your digestive system. The fiber passes through undigested, and does not contribute calories. For food calories (actually kcal in the SI measurement) you can deduct 4 calories per gram of fiber from the carbohydrate portion of the caloric value.

A recent randomized controlled trial sheds some light on this:

One group was fed a refined grains diet and the other was fed a whole grains diet with an identical number of calories. No appreciable differences were seen in hunger/satiety, glycemic control, or insulin levels, but despite the fact that the whole grains group excreted more of their calories (higher stool energy content) and boosted their metabolisms (increased BMR), they actually lost less weight and experienced less fat loss than those eating refined grains diet. The refined grains group also gained more muscle mass than the whole grains group.

Conclusion: there’s nothing magic about whole grains.

WhyNot, you’re not cynical enough. More likely, it’s just labeled “Wheat Bread”. Which means that the white flour used to make it came from grinding up wheat. It might be a darker shade of brown than white bread, but that can just be from dyes. They needn’t have used any while wheat flour in it at all.

That said, even if you do get real whole wheat bread with 5 grams of fiber per serving, 5 grams isn’t very much compared to the mass of the whole slice. It’s enough to give you some of the benefits of the fiber (mostly, bowel regularity, but it might also reduce your risk of heart disease), but the decrease in accessible Calories is going to be negligible.

I eat it because it tastes good. Preferably toasted with smoked salmon.

Brown rice, not so much.

Just make sure you IGNORE THE FRONT OF THE PACKAGE! Both Oroweat and Pepperidge Farm bread have big print claiming lots of good stuff per two slices. Below that are smaller blocks about calories, fat, and sugar. What’s hard to see is the tiny print in black on the clear bag (so the color/texture of the bread make it hard to see) that those smaller blocks refer to a “1-slice serving”. In other words, they suggest eating two servings at once without realizing what you’re really getting.

The nutritional info on the back could certainly be subject to creative rounding, but at least all the numbers refer to the same serving size.

Huh. I clicked on that linked and see nothing there about losing less weight or less fat loss in the refined grain group.

Nor in this coverage of the study:

Looking at the tables in the article fat and muscle mass and waist circumference changes were extremely slight in both groups, of varied directions, and not of statistical significance.

But yeah 100 calories difference a day of impact is not some magic bullet and the mere act of switching to whole grains will not be enough in and of itself to impact satiety much in an ad lib condition. Now as part of a complete dietary approach that also includes lots of vegetables, little highly processed shit, and so on? It adds up. A complete approach is no single thing.

The complete article is behind a paywall but here’s a link to an excerpt:

Yes, that is the table showing a significant difference between the groups in the change of resting metabolic rate over the course of the six weeks intervention period between the two groups and no significant differences in weight change or body composition measures.

The study was designed to be a weight maintenance diet, isocaloric for each group. Significant weight loss and body composition changes were not expected and as expected no significant changes were seen. The study was designed to test the hypothesis that the known association of a high fiber diet with lower body weight might be via the mechanisms of increased metabolic rate and fecal loss of calories. It was a meaningful study in that it demonstrated that such actually does occur and seemingly to a degree greater than would be expected from the excess calories expended processing the fiber and fecal loss of the fiber alone.

The companion study, published in the same issue, looked at the impact of the “whole grain” substitution for six weeks on microbiota, immune, and inflammatory markers. Even just a six week period of that isolated dietary change was enough to demonstrate modest but significant improvements on microbiota, immune, and inflammatory markers.
So cmkeller to your op - as Surreal’s cite demonstrates completely switching from refined grains to whole grains as done in that study as a single isolated intervention, keeping total calories eaten the same, will result in about 100 calories/d difference net out above and beyond any calorie difference listed on the nutrition labels and will result in other health improvements. But if you are wanting to lose weight that isolated change alone will do fairly little. In terms of listed calories - 1 gram of carbohydrate counts for 4 calories. If a slice of whole grain bread includes 3 of 24 grams of carbohydrate as fiber instead of just 1 of those 24 grams, and is different in no other way, then your listed calorie count is only 8 calories less per slice.

Not a major change in isolation.

An interesting question … although the OP’s focus on carbohydrates might be a little misguided in terms of healthy eating (as opposed to strictly weight loss or gain) …

Consider the grain of wheat fresh off the wheat stalk … within this grain is quite a bit of starch, an energy source for the eventual sprout to use until she begins photosynthesis and produce her own carbs … however there’s also all the other vital nutrients within the grain for the sprout to use until she can collect or produce her own … the problem is that some of these nutrients will quickly oxidize and be ruined if they are exposed to atmospheric oxygen … thus the wheat grain has a protective outer shell to prevent oxygen from reaching her vital innards …

Now let’s send our grain of wheat to the miller … he grinds up the wheat grain breaking open the grain’s seed cover exposing not just the starch, but also everything else … and rather quickly the sensitive nutrients start oxidizing or worse bacteria colonies start to form feeding off these vital nutrients … either of these processes greatly reduce the “shelf life” of flour … food processors have to de-naturalize the flour so it doesn’t spoil right away and thus a bakery in Kentucky can make pastries and ship them world-wide without the worry of the product going rancid before it reaches our supermarket shelves … the problem being that for food to be nutritious for higher mammals it is also nutritious to the lowly bacteria … so to give the food a longer shelf life, processors have to make the food non-nutritious for all …

The work around is to store our grain as grain, mill up the day’s needs first thing in the morning and bake our day’s bread … a major pain in the ass and this would collapse the stock value of many of the largest corporations in the world (think ADM) …

This doesn’t mean store-bought bread is bad, just that it’s not as good as it could be … balance your diet with fresh veggies, fruits and other non-processed foods …

Cite: Kloss, Jethro; Back to Eden; Longview Publishing House, Coalmont, TN; 1939