As we strive hard in our busy lives, it is really important to maintain a balanced diet to stay fit and healthy. When we say balanced diet what do we actually mean by it? A balanced diet is the one that provides all the essential nutrients to your body to function correctly. Hence, it is very important for us to watch what we add into our diet. Aren't we looking out for easy ways to make our meals healthy and filled with nutrition?
Whole grains are packed with nutrients including fibre, vitamins, protein and also minerals. In traditional cooking whole grains have been a very important part of Indian cuisine not just limited to the roti and chapati made from whole wheat flour, we have bajra roti in north, ragi mudde and ragi rotti in south India, jowar roti or jolada roti, Kuttu or buckwheat roti, makai or corn which is a staple crop extensively used in everyday meals like khichda and roti and many more. But today with busy schedules we hardly find time to make different dishes with the goodness of whole grains, we are more conscious about eating healthy, diet planning, so adding a mix of all grains makes our life easy adding to the healthy diet.
Let's have a look at the health benefits of whole grains before we get into different ways to add multi-grains into your diet.
- Reduces risk of cardiovascular diseases: Regular consumption of grains lowers LDL that is low density lipoprotein which is referred as “bad cholesterol” and triglyceride levels ,which in turn reduces the heart diseases. Triglycerides are nothing but the fat that is carried in blood from the food, so whole grains are low in fat.
- Reduces the risk of Diabetes : It prevents the digestion of starch and slow digestion is responsible for preventing spikes (over time spikes leads to insulin resistance)
- Whole grains are an excellent source of dietary fibre and hence consumption of grains inversely helps reduce hypertension, maintain blood pressure and also reduce obesity.
Multigrain is a combination of two or more grains like Wheat, rice, corn, millet, barley, corn, flax seeds and oats etc. Adding multigrain with the goodness of all grains is a good option but it is just not limited to roti, chapattis and bread.
Here are the different ways we can add Multigrain twist into our diet and also lined up the recipes below that you can make in your kitchen.
- Multigrain paratha, roti, thepla and bhakri: We are familiar with multigrain atta to make roti and chapati which are readily available in the market, but why not make parathas with delicious stuffings, theplas flavoured with methi and bhakri too.
- Dosa and idlis: Give your usual dosa a twist of the multigrain way by adding in millets, cereals and pulses, like making it ragi dosa or oats dosa and much more. And top it with your favourite veggies and make it your favourite healthy breakfast.
- Multigrain Pizza: Give your regular pizza a multigrain twist by replacing the all purpose flour with multigrain flour and inject some health into it. Maybe you can also excuse for the delicious cheesy topping too.
- Multigrain desserts and snacks: Give your daily tea time snacks like vada, mathri a healthy twist by adding in the multigrain flour. Even your tea time cakes and desserts like waffles, cakes, cupcakes and bread can be made loaded with nutrition by adding in the multigrain flour instead of the usual maida or all purpose flour.
- Multigrain crepes and pancakes: pancakes and crepes can be made more nutritious, healthy and wholesome by adding in the multigrain twist.
