{"id":186,"date":"2009-10-22T17:53:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-22T17:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fertilekitchen.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/22\/eating-whole-foods-and-whole-grains\/"},"modified":"2026-11-06T18:53:58","modified_gmt":"2026-11-06T18:53:58","slug":"eating-whole-foods-and-whole-grains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fertilekitchen.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/22\/eating-whole-foods-and-whole-grains\/","title":{"rendered":"Eating Whole Foods and Whole Grains"},"content":{"rendered":"
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One of my readers was told to eat more whole foods and wanted to know, what are those, exactly? Thought that would be a good topic to explore because on a fertility diet, eating whole foods (as opposed to the over-processed variety) is a very good thing. An article on the Willy Street Co-op\u2019s website<\/a>, I thought, had a good definition: whole foods are those that are \u201cas close as possible to their natural state. These are foods that have had little to no processing and retain their original nutrients, fiber and flavor.\u201d The article includes examples: fresh apples instead of apple juice, brown rice instead of white. It also includes baked goods made with whole grain flour and natural sweeteners (such as honey) rather than baked goods made with refined flour (in which the grains have been stripped of their nutritious outer parts) and processed sugar, which we know is bad for us.<\/p>\n

On the other end of the spectrum \u2013 what are NOT whole foods? Basically the processed variety, and especially the over-processed. This article (link no longer available) lists great examples of what are NOT whole foods by listing whole foods along with their processed \u201cequivalents,\u201d including: boneless, skinless chicken (instead of chicken nuggets), fresh fish (instead of fish sticks), potatoes (instead of potato chips), whole grain bread, such as rye bread (instead of white bread), whole grain oatmeal (instead of almost any breakfast cereal).<\/p>\n

Whole grains, by the way, are those which contain all of their parts: the outer shell (the bran), inner portion (endosperm) and the kernel (the germ). They include oatmeal, brown rice, whole-grain barley, wild rice, buckwheat, Kamut\u00ae and others. Whole grains can also be used as an ingredient in food, such as flour, cereal or crackers.<\/p>\n

Whole grains provide more fiber and essential nutrients than refined grains, which are often stripped of their outer shell.<\/p>\n

So why is eating more whole foods so good for you and your fertility? Because of what you\u2019re getting and what you\u2019re not getting when you eat them.<\/p>\n

What you\u2019re getting with whole foods is a lot more of the essential vitamins, minerals, micronutrients, antioxidants, phytochemicals, and fiber, for example, than you would with non-whole foods. What you\u2019re NOT getting is a lot of the ugly, unhealthy ingredients you often get in packaged or processed foods, such as sugar, hydrogenated oil (trans fat, very bad for you!), high fructose corn syrup (more sugar), mono sodium glutamate (MSG), flavors, preservatives, fillers and artificial sweeteners, to name a few.\u00a0 Many of these ingredients impact fertility negatively. Sugar <\/a>can mess with your hormones, for example.<\/p>\n

So eat more whole foods! And cut out the processed stuff.<\/p>\n

You can read more about processed foods vs. whole foods in this article<\/a>.
\nFor examples of whole food meals, check out this website. (link no longer available)
\n(photo by http:\/\/healthhabits.wordpress.com\/)<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my readers was told to eat more whole foods and wanted to know, what are those, exactly? Thought that would be a good topic to explore because on a fertility diet, eating whole foods (as opposed to the over-processed variety) is a very good thing. An article on the Willy Street Co-op\u2019s website, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":187,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-whole-foods","category-whole-grains","entry"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/www.fertilekitchen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/vegetables.jpg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/www.fertilekitchen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/vegetables.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"baileycom","author_link":"https:\/\/www.fertilekitchen.com\/blog\/author\/baileycom\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fertilekitchen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fertilekitchen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fertilekitchen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fertilekitchen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fertilekitchen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.fertilekitchen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":587,"href":"https:\/\/www.fertilekitchen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions\/587"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fertilekitchen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fertilekitchen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fertilekitchen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fertilekitchen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}