Why Grains Suck When Every Calorie Counts

I do some pretty intense training on a daily basis and I’m on a calories restricted diet. So every calorie counts for me. One of the things that aggravate me most about Paleo naysayers is how they often nearly always have mistake ideas about the nutritional make up of the foods they are urging me to eat.

“If you cut out grains, like rice, how are you going to get enough fiber?”

The fact is the calories to fiber ratio in grains compared to most veggies (leafy green veg, not fruits commonly called vegetables by many people like peppers or zucchini), is terrible. Let’s take a look at how brown rice, commonly considered a good-old whole grain, measures up to the lowly spinach.

	Brown Rice – 1 Cup – Steamed	Spinach – 1 Cup – Boiled
Total Calories:	216	41
Fiber:	3.5g	4.3 g
Calcium	19.5 mg	244 mg
Potassium	83.9 mg	838.8 mg
Carbohydrate:	216 g	41 g

A cup of rice has more than 5 times the calories of the same amount of spinach and nearly a gram less fiber. Another common vegetable I eat, the Brussels sprout, has 6.8 g of fiber and 65 calories. So who’s getting more fiber in their diet and fewer calories? The guy eating from the fast-food Chinese buffet with its sugar laden sauces or the Paleo eater chowing down on 7 to 10 servings of vegetables every day?” But what about bread?” the naysayer might ask. Two slices of whole wheat bread (let’s be honest how most people eat it – sandwiches) is even worse: 148 calories but only 1.9 g of fiber. The breakdown of other nutrients like calcium is just as bad.

I guess my point here is that you need to understand the facts about a position, either side, if you are truely going to espouse said view. If not, you are just repeating things that you have heard and don't really understand. And that's setting yourself up to look foolish.