This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Wheat Food Council. All opinions are 100% mine.
Unless you grew up on a farm, you probably don't understand how most of our food makes it into the grocery stores and onto our tables. One of the most important grains in our country is wheat, and there's a new interactive multimedia program called How Wheat Works that aims to help people understand all the phases wheat goes through before finally making it onto our tables. You can sign up for free and plant your own virtual wheat field. There are four phases to go through, growth, harvest, milling/baking and the grocer’s aisle, and each one takes just a few minutes to complete. You get to choose things like what type of wheat to plant and what kind of flour to mill. When you complete a phase, they'll email you in about a day to remind you to come back and complete the next one, so it takes 4 days to get through the whole thing.Now I grew up in Central Illinois around lots and lots of corn and bean fields, though I can't really tell you what all the farmers go through to get their crops ready for market. I definitely don't know anything about wheat, so I'm going to sign up for this and see what I can learn. Not only that, but for every person who participates, the Wheat Foods Council will donate 2 pounds of flour, up to 90,000 pounds, to Operation Homefront (operationhomefront.net), a non-profit organization that provides assistance to needy U.S. troops and their families. Wouldn't it be great if they could reach that 90,000 pound mark? Donations are made possible by Council members at ADM and ConAgra, two of the world’s largest millers.
There are additional activities and recipes on the site as well as a special page for the youth at www.wheatfoods.org - click the 'Just for Kids' link. All this was put together by the Wheat Food Council because they believe that teaching people how a whole or enriched grain food comes to be can shed new light on wheat nutrition, resulting in informed food choices. It is good to think about what we eat and to know where our food comes from, don't you think?
