What is in a grain?
Cereal grains come from a large family of grasses, with the three most commonly cultivated being wheat, rice and maize.
The harvest kernel is made up of three main parts: the endosperm, which is the starchy centre, the germ, which is the embryo of a new plant, and the bran, the outer layer of the kernel. The bran is further divided into four main layers: the pericarp, testa, nucellar and the aleurone. The milling process removes some of these sections, with the sections removed determining the type of flour. White flour contains only the endosperm, brown flour contains some of the bran and endosperm, and wholemeal contains the whole grain.
Milled grain is the source of a large variety of nutrients. Indeed, the UK National Diet and Nutrition Survey found that in 2014 bread made up these percentages of daily dietary intake of nutrients:
- 10% of Protein
- 10% of Energy
- 19% of Fibre
- 18% of Calcium
- 16% of Iron
- 11% of Zinc