Grains of various description are a staple of many preppers’ long term food storage. As they should be. Grains are at the heart of most people’s diets (store what you eat). They’re compact calories that, as a group, adapt well to long-term storage. But what form of grain storage is best? Should you go with whole grains, or processed forms?
Salty and I talk it over in this podcast:
Processed grains have had their hulls and embryos stripped away.
What makes a grain not ‘whole’?
A grain kernel is essentially a plant embryo wearing its winter coat and carrying its lunch.
The hull provides protection. The endosperm is the calories the parent plant packed to give the embryo energy to grow enough to be able to start photosynthesizing on its own.
When while grains are milled, the hull and embryo are lost. White flour, corn flour, and polished white rice contain only the endosperm.
The good news is, the endosperm is very stable and has lots of easily usable calories. The bad news is, endosperm contains little of the proteins, vitamins, or minerals of the whole grain.
Nutritional composition of whole wheat: (1)
Hull: 16% protein, 3% fat, lots of fiber, significant B vitamins and iron
Embryo: 23% protein, 10% fat, moderate fiber, significant B vitamins, iron, and omega-3 fats
Endosperm: 7% protein, not much else
Of course there’s also lots of carb calories in whole grain. Endsperm has the highest concentration of that.
Why is processed grain so popular?
Whole grains are quite clearly nutritionally superior. So why do people mill the grains to make the white flour, corn flour, or polished white rice in the first place? Two main reasons:
The original reason was for storage. Oils exposed to oxygen go rancid over time, and that was historically the limiting factor for grain storage. An important point: We now can store the grains in oxygen-free environments, very much reducing the oils problem.
Then a more human (and not human at our best) reason came up. Who could first afford to have their grains milled to make white flour and polished rice? Rich people. Therefore white bread and white rice became status symbols.
For awhile, this led to the ironic situation that the poor people tended to be healthier than the rich, because of the improved nutrition of the poor ‘whole grains and vegetables’ diet vs. the ‘white bread, lots of meat, and abundant alcohol’ rich diet. Then the grain processing got cheap and the tables are turned, with the more affluent going back to whole grains.
Brown rice is much more nutritious than polished, but sadly doesn’t store well. (4)
Most people like what they grew up eating. Therefore, people that grew up eating processed grains often like them best … if only for a while as their tastes readjust.
Up sides of whole grains for modern preppers
Some whole grains are among the best long-term food storage forms.
Air-excluded whole wheat lasts very well — more than thirty years if kept appropriately dry and at room temp or cooler. Rolled oats, which are minimally processed whole grains, are also storage champions. Whole corn is too. We just buy cheap bulk popcorn and it’s been good for years even without aggressive air-exclusion storage.
Whole grains are always more nutritious than processed. It’s got more protein and a lot more B vitamins. Those B vitamins are the same ones whose absence have caused millions of deaths worldwide from deficiencies (beriberi), so that’s not a small thing. The people who died were living mostly on white rice or on corn grits. Whole grain also has more valuable kinds of fats. Plus, that fiber is valuable for gut health.
Whole grains are not all roses.
That oil content of the whole grains does cause problems in some storage contexts. (2)
Particularly, air-exposed and ground whole grains do go bad faster than air-exposed processed grains. Also, brown rice doesn’t store that great even when left whole. Instant brown rice is intermediate in nutrition between whole and white rice, and stores well.
So where does that leave the grain question?
For long-term storage, oxygen-low packaging of whole wheat wins over all other forms of wheat for shelf life and nutrition. Just have a good way to grind it; wheat berries are pretty bland.
Not only is dry ice sublimation fun, but done in a bucket of wheat right before sealing excludes most of the oxygen. (3)
Corn is the same story; with the addition that popcorn stores better (even in air) than other forms of corn. It has less moisture. It eats pretty much the same, but makes a more coarse meal when ground.
Oats do very well as rolled oats. They cook faster and easier than whole oats. In fact, you can get by without cooking them at all with a few hours soak. Rolled oats store better than instant, too.
Rice is the whole grain rule breaker. Whole brown rice doesn’t have a great shelf life — or so multiple sources tell me. Polished white stores well but is nutritionally disappointing. For long shelf life, ease of cooking, and nutrition, Salty and I go with instant brown in oxygen-low packaging.
Selected References
1) Illustration and composition of wheat kernel is based on (and simplified from) Berghoff (1998), cited by muehlenchemie, as well as other sources on the internet. Nutritional value: Endosperm GermBran Berghoff W, 1998. Längsschnitt durch ein Getreidekorn. aid infodienst Verbraucherschutz Ernährung, Bonn.
2) Long-term food storage. LDS.org. https://www.lds.org/topics/food-storage/longer-term-food-supply?lang=eng&old=true#1 Accessed 5-5-19.
3) Christopher from Salem, OR, USA [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)]
4) This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
My choice when ever practical is Whole Grains for storage. They tend to last longer and I can easily process them into cracked, rolled or flour as needed.
The ability to sprout whole grains is wonderful. Increasing Bio-Availability of nutrients (even some Vitamin C increases noted), increasing bulk when food stuff are short. Sprouts have specific cautions as a nice damp-wet grain is also attractive to molding and such so do some study about it. Basically it takes around 3 days for sprouting so three set ups sprouting for daily consumption. Two lunch room trays one with damp cloth-paper towels and one as a cover makes fast sprouting for me.
Making your Chickens HAPPY with fresh sprouts when the weather is nasty I.E. Winter increases their health, egg production (with or with out extra light) and reduces a little the volume of food consumed by my records.
That and in a true SHTF situation you can PLANT whole grains for a workable (and the key word is Work) grain production for yourself. In High School I had a Jr. HS summer project where I replaced my front yard with a wheat patch. When harvested and threshed using a drill a bolt a bit of chain and a 5 gallon bucket along with a box fan and screen. We harvested 3+ 5 gallon buckets of grain and even ground it for sourdough bread at school. Best Science Teacher ever.
CAUTION about dry ice. It works by being heaver than air displacing the Oxygen-Nitrogen mixture we call Air. Smothers the little critters that want to eat your 5 gallon bucket storage foods. DO it OUTSIDE Please or at least a well ventilated area. I was told of a basement dry ice food storage incident around Y2K where two people died from being smothered by it. I cannot confirm that incident but I can understand how it might occur.