Is the Flour which comes to your kitchen, good for your health?

Today, people lead busy lifestyles. Balancing work and home has become a hard nut to crack. Amidst the entire hullabaloo of the jam-packed routine, they tend to overlook their health.  Some health-conscious people take gym memberships and try to be in optimum health. What they forget is that health is not just about how much we work out. It is also about what we eat and most importantly, the quality of food that we eat.

Looking at the current scenario, we could easily tell that the food that we eat is not actually the finest quality food. Adulteration destroys all the nutrients required to be free of diseases. From vegetables to fruits, everything that we eat is degraded to the core.

Talking about the flour that comes to our kitchen, is it really good for health? Let’s find out.

A walk into the past

Earlier, the Indian households used to mill their own flour ensuring the better health of the family members. The women of the house would use the hand flour mills to grind the wheat grains to get fresh flour.

Today, no one actually has the time to mill the flour at home and so, they trust the nearby flour mill to deliver them healthy flour. But, the question is, “is that flour really healthy?”

The flour that comes from flour mill is loaded with refined flour (maida). Maida, which is basically finely milled flour, is quite unhealthy. The flour contains less fiber.

Adding to that, the mills generally practice unhealthy and unhygienic measures to mill the flour. They use poor quality wheat and then store them in dirty sacs. The entire process keeps sucking the health quotient of the wheat. The final product that reaches our kitchens has no nutritional value.

Is branded wheat flour better

Of late, it came to the realization of some people and they have started using branded wheat flour.

The brands usually use finer quality wheat and hygienic milling practices. They give utmost importance to the wellbeing of the consumers and thereby, adopt the most hygienic measures to mill the flour.

But, the only downfall with them is that the flour takes a lot of time to reach the kitchen and so, the freshness fades away. However, this issue is resolved with the flour being sealed in air-tight sealed packets.

If we take a deeper look into it, we would realize that branded flours are actually healthy.

The bigger brands in the country use the finest commercial flour mills to grind the flour. These flour mills offer the finest quality of flour without snatching away all the important nutrients. The flour that reaches our home comes coated with nutrients.

Some healthy tips to enhance the nutritional value of the flour

Whether branded or a home-based mill, the wheat flour that reaches the kitchens is good to eat. It comes with all the important elements that our body needs.

Though the milled flour is already healthy, you still get a chance to enhance the health quotient. Deriving some more health from the milled flour is always in your hands. Here are a few tips that you must follow in order to keep intact the nutritional value of the flour:

  • Always prefer milling flour at your home. This is the ideal way to preserve all the nutrients present in the flour. Also, it ensures proper hygiene and good health. But, if you cannot mill at home, stick to branded flour.
  • Store the whole grain flour into the freezer to avoid the oils from going rancid. Keep them in the freezer to arrest phytase, an enzyme present in the bran.
  • Buy unbromated whole wheat flour.