Whole Grain Vs. Whole Wheat - What s the best for you? Part I We have all seen it, 100% whole wheat bread that sits next to the white bread. It looks like white bread, but it says enriched. Enriched with what? Well, let me back up a little. When wheat is harvested the whole grain is taken to the refinery. REFINERY, did you see that! The wheat is heated to a point when the germ and the bran fall off. What is left is the starch, the white part, the not good for you part. The part that has a long shelf life and is bug resistant. Do you know why it is bug resistant? Bugs CANNOT sustain life in it. They will die if they only eat this refined grain. So why on earth, with the abundance of good life sustaining food do we eat white flour, which is the starch of the wheat grain ground up. Honestly do I need to answer that? Take a look around and you will see obesity on the rise, and now not only are adults overweight, but kids, little kids are getting more and more fat. Why? We are feeding ourselves all kinds of unhealthy food. Some do it because it is cheaper, some because of taste, and some just because they don't know any better.

So now that I explained what white bread is made of, let me continue to answer the question of "what exactly is enriched"? After the refinery takes the grains apart and makes white flour, which has no nutrition, they add some vitamins, some minerals, and some fiber, but not even a gram worth. The white bread is enriched with some of the very things they just worked so hard to take out. However, they do not add in as much of the grain they take away, otherwise it would be whole grain. Just enough to add some flavor and calories to it.

What is whole grain? It is the WHOLE grain used in the process of making bread, cereal and the building blocks of many other foods. For it to be truly healthy whole grain needs to be listed on your bread, cereal or other food in the number 1 or number 2 position on the ingredients list. No, whole wheat flour which is followed by (enriched white flour, niacin, and iron) is not healthy, it is a way of making people believe that they are getting a whole grain bread. They are not lying, it is whole wheat flour, but not whole grain. It did come from the wheat plant and it is all wheat, but not all grain. Whole is just another word like all. If you look a little farther down on the list you will see molasses, why molasses you ask? It colors the bread to make it look brown. Yup, white flour plus vitamins and minerals still does not bring the bran back into the bread. Bran is what helps to give the natural brown color to bread. So, they again, add something to it, to try and make it look like something it is not.

Linda Cramer is the owner of Oregon Gourmet Foods and Gifts. Visit our website. http://www.oregongourmetfoods.com

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To buy a new car is probably one of the least profitable bargains you can do. Ok, prove it!. Just take a look at a used car value book list. The first one to two years of an auto's lifetime it will lose 30-40% of it's price as new. A five year old car will have lost 65% of it's original price. So, if you can accept to buy, not a brand new but a few years older model that almost look like a new one, you can save lots of money. My best advice to you is that if money matters at all, buy a cheap used car.

Let's say you buy a 5 year old car that has lost 65% of it's value. Now, the value will only drop 15% or less after the fifth year of it's lifetime. Come on, do the math; your driving cost for the years to come would only be 10-15% of the cars original value. Can you see the huge money saving potential in this way of purchasing cars? If we deduct these vehicle costs from what it cost to purchase and drive a brand new auto, you'll have a small fortune to spend on other things that can make life good for you. After two or three years of driving this car, you may resell it and buy another even newer one.

If you think this was a great bargain, just wait because here comes a real bomb that will probably blow you away. The figures above were made under the pre-assumption that you purchased your vehicle from an ordinary auto dealership. What if I told you that you could buy the same, much cheaper another place? I'm talking about auctions. There are lot's of auctions around the country as well as on the internet. There is one type of auction that beats all the other when it comes to cheap bargains and this is repossessed car auctions. These are auctions of vehicles that get repossessed by banks, US Customs etc.

In the past you had to be a dealer with a special license to benefit from this enormous cost saving source. Fortunately, this has changed and today anyone can take advantage of this great bargain channel, by applying for a membership at a special repossessed car auction licensed organization. For a few bucks a year you are now able to search through lists of hundreds of thousands of vehicles and your chances of finding the vehicle of your dream for a price that you can afford are better now than ever. These organizations are represented offline as well as online. I know people who are members of such organizations that have saved between 80% and 95% of the car's book value. So why not consider to take a look at this channel next time you want to purchase a car?

Terje Brooks Ellingsen is a writer and internet publisher. He runs the website cheap-used-cars.w-eland.com. Terje gives advice and helps people with automotive issues like finding cheap used cars and car auctions.

¶ 3:42 PM 0 comments