Criteria for determining acceptable grains/breads

Criteria for determining acceptable grains/breads

The following criteria are to be used as a basis for crediting items to meet the grains/breads requirement:

1. The items must be whole-grain or enriched or made from whole-grain or enriched meal or flour; or if it is a cereal the product must be whole-grain, enriched or fortified.

2. If it is enriched, the item must meet the Food and Drug Administration’s Standards of Identity for enriched bread, macaroni and noodle products, rice cornmeal or corn grits.

3. The item must contain enriched flour and/or whole-grain as specified on the label or according to the recipe, or must be enriched in preparation or processing and labeled “enriched.”

4. Ingredients in items that are partial grains such as wheat germ, oat and wheat bran or other brans may not be used for determining the credit of the item because they do not contain the whole grain.

5. The item must be provided in quantities specified in the regulations. The grains/breads list contains suggested equivalent minimum serving sizes for a wide variety of items. In lieu of using these minimum serving sizes, crediting may be determined for a particular item using the following criteria.

Criteria for determining equivalent minimum weight of a serving

The following criteria must be used in determining the minimum weight of grains/breads items. In calculating the reference servings in the grains/breads list, the amounts of key nutrients for each item were averaged from the available data for items of that type.

It was determined that the key nutrients in the items were basically furnished by the enriched flour and/or whole-grain ingredient. Food items have been divided into groups according to the product weight which will yield the enriched flour and/or whole-grain equivalent of the reference slice of bread. Within each group, all items have approximately the same nutrient and grain content per serving. The minimum weight of each group is based on the enriched flour and/or whole-grain content of the product (exclusive of fillings, toppings, etc.). Therefore, equivalent minimum serving sizes may vary from those on the grains/breads list as long as the criteria for determining minimum weight has been met.

1. A serving of grains/breads must contain no less than 14.75 gm enriched flour and/or whole-grain. This amount was determined using the grain content of a 25 gm (or 0.9 oz) slice of white bread as a reference. Crediting of foods is determined by the total amount of enriched flour and/or whole-grain in the recipe or formula divided by the portion yield.

2. 1/4 of a serving is the smallest amount allowable to be credited toward the grains/breads requirement.