Phrase one: "Whole wheat flour" is defined, and the real thing

This is a regulated term with a standard of identity, and the operative sentence is short:

"The proportions of the natural constituents of such wheat, other than moisture, remain unaltered."

Nothing has been removed. The bran, the germ and the starchy endosperm are all present in the proportions they had in the grain.

Three names are legally interchangeable for this product: "whole wheat flour," "graham flour," and "entire wheat flour." If you see graham flour on an ingredient list, that is whole wheat flour.

When "whole wheat flour" is the first ingredient, you are getting a whole grain product. This is the phrase that means what people think all of them mean.

Phrase two: "Wheat flour" is defined, and refined

Here is the trap, and it is the most consequential one on a bread bag.

The federal standard of identity covers four names together: "Flour, white flour, wheat flour, plain flour." All four describe the same thing. The definition:

"The flour is freed from bran coat, or bran coat and germ, to such extent that the percent of ash therein… is not more than the sum of 1/20 of the percent of protein therein… plus 0.35."

"Wheat flour" is white flour. The word "wheat" is doing no work: all of this is wheat. What distinguishes whole wheat flour from wheat flour is the word "whole."

Two related terms:

"Unbleached wheat flour" is the same refined flour that skipped a bleaching step. The standard makes bleaching optional and requires the word "Bleached" on the label if it is done. So "unbleached" tells you about a processing step, not about the grain.

"Enriched flour" is refined flour with nutrients added back. The standard says enriched flour "conforms to the definition and standard of identity… prescribed for flour… except that" specified nutrients are added: thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, folic acid and iron. Up to 5 percent wheat germ may be added.

Enriched flour does not restore the bran: five nutrients go back in, and the fiber does not. "Enriched" describes what was put back, which is a small fraction of what was taken out.

Phrase three: "Made with whole grains" is not defined

Searches of FDA's whole grain guidance for the phrase "made with" return nothing: it does not appear, and no federal definition for the phrase could be located anywhere.

That means a product can carry it while being predominantly refined flour with a small quantity of whole grain added.

There is a structural reason no threshold exists, and it explains a whole category of confusion. Nutrient content claims ("good source of," "high in," "excellent source of") are defined for nutrients required in nutrition labeling. Fiber has such a claim because fiber is a nutrient on the panel.

Whole grain is an ingredient, not a nutrient. So there is no "good source of whole grain" tier, because the regulatory machinery that creates such tiers does not reach ingredients. Statements about how much whole grain a product contains are handled through different provisions, and FDA's draft guidance asks only that they "are not false or misleading" and "do not imply a particular level of the ingredient, i.e., 'high' or 'excellent source.'"

So "made with whole grains" is a true statement about composition with no floor underneath it.

Phrase four: "Multigrain" is not defined either

The same is true here: the term does not appear in FDA's whole grain guidance, and no federal definition could be located.

"Multigrain" means several grains. It says nothing about whether any of them are whole. A multigrain bread made from refined wheat flour, refined rye flour and refined barley flour is accurately labeled.

It is also the phrase most likely to appear alongside visual cues (brown coloring, visible seeds, a rustic bag) that do the persuading the words cannot legally do. Seeds on a crust are seeds on a crust.

What FDA says a whole grain is, and how much weight it carries

FDA published guidance on whole grain label statements in 2006. It is still a draft, and its own header is explicit:

"Draft: Not for implementation. Contains non-binding recommendations."

"This draft guidance, when finalized, will represent FDA's current thinking on this topic. It does not create or confer any rights for or on any person and does not operate to bind FDA or the public."

That matters, because the definition everybody quotes has no binding force. Here it is:

"Cereal grains that consist of the intact, ground, cracked or flaked caryopsis, whose principal anatomical components, the starchy endosperm, germ and bran, are present in the same relative proportions as they exist in the intact caryopsis."

("Caryopsis" is the botanical term for a grain kernel.)

The exclusions are the useful part, because they cover foods widely assumed to be whole grains:

"Pearled barley should not be considered a whole grain because some of the bran layer has been removed."

"Degerminated and bolted corn meals should not be considered whole grain products because germ or bran has been removed."

"Soybeans and chickpeas should not be considered whole grains, but should be considered legumes."

Pearled barley is the one that surprises people. It is a perfectly good food with real fiber; it simply is not, by this definition, a whole grain.

On the strongest claim: "We recommend that products labeled with '100 percent whole grain' not contain grain ingredients other than those the agency considers to be whole grains."

The health claim, and a distinction that is routinely blurred

Whole grain products can carry a claim linking them to heart disease. It travels a different legal route from most claims on a package, and the difference is not cosmetic.

Most health claims you see (including the soluble fiber and heart disease claim on oat products) are codified: written into the regulations, with detailed criteria FDA established.

The whole grain claim is not. It exists through a notification process, under a provision allowing a manufacturer to notify FDA of a claim based on an authoritative statement from a federal scientific body or the National Academy of Sciences. There are two such notifications for whole grains, and they differ.

The 1999 notification, submitted by General Mills, rests on a National Academy of Sciences statement about plant foods. Its model wording:

"Diets rich in whole grain foods and other plant foods and low in total fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol, may help reduce the risk of heart disease and certain cancers."

The 2003 notification, submitted by Kraft Foods for whole grain foods with moderate fat content, has different wording:

"Diets rich in whole grain foods and other plant foods, and low in saturated fat and cholesterol, may help reduce the risk of heart disease."

This version mentions no cancer, and it says "low in saturated fat and cholesterol," not "low in total fat." The qualifying criteria differ as well: the 2003 version specifies low saturated fat (1 g or less) and low cholesterol (20 mg or less) per serving, quantitative trans fat labeling, and limits on total fat.

Both share one criterion worth memorizing: the food must contain 51 percent or more whole grain ingredients by weight per reference amount customarily consumed (the regulatory serving).

Fifty-one percent. A product carrying this claim is, by the claim's own standard, just over half whole grain. That is a real and meaningful threshold, and it is lower than most people assume when they see the claim on a box.

The whole grain stamp: a private program

The stamp on many packages is not a government mark. It is run by the Whole Grains Council, part of Oldways, a nonprofit organization, as a third-party program.

Three tiers, from the organization's own description:

• 100% Stamp: a minimum of 16 grams of whole grain per labeled serving, and "all its grain ingredients are whole grain."
• 50%+ Stamp: 8 grams, and "at least half of its grain ingredients are whole grain."
• Basic Stamp: 8 grams, for a product that "contains a significant amount of whole grain, but which contain primarily refined grain."

The Basic Stamp's own published description concedes that the product is primarily refined grain. A stamp is on the package, the number 8 is on the stamp, and the program's own words say the food is mostly white flour.

That is not deception: the tiers are published and the distinction is available to anyone who looks. But the three stamps look broadly similar on a shelf, and the differences between them are the whole information content.

The program's fee and membership structure could not be verified for this article, so no figure is given. It is a private third-party program rather than a government certification, and its page carries no disclaimer of government endorsement.

The routine, in order

1. Read the first ingredient. Is it a whole grain ("whole wheat flour," "whole grain oats," "whole grain corn")? If the first ingredient is "wheat flour," "enriched wheat flour" or "unbleached wheat flour," the product is predominantly refined, whatever the front of the bag says.

2. Ignore the front-of-package language entirely unless it says "100% whole grain" or "100% whole wheat." "Made with whole grains" and "multigrain" have no floor.

3. Check the fiber, in grams. Whole grain and fiber are related but not the same thing. Some whole grains carry less fiber than you would expect; some products reach a large fiber number with added isolated fibers rather than with whole grains. Two thresholds, defined in regulation: 2.8 to 5.3 grams per reference amount is the range for a "good source of fiber" claim, and 5.6 grams or more for a "high in fiber" claim.

4. If there is a stamp, read which stamp it is. 100%, 50%+ and Basic are materially different, and the Basic tier describes a primarily refined product.

5. Check added sugars, because whole grain products are frequently sweetened. A companion article on reading cereal boxes covers this and the serving size trap in detail.

One thing worth keeping in perspective

Whole grain is worth choosing. The federal standard for whole wheat flour is that the natural constituents of the wheat "remain unaltered": the bran and the germ are still there, in their original proportions. Refining removes them, and enrichment puts five nutrients back without restoring the bran.

But "whole grain" on a package is not a verdict on the food. A whole grain cracker with a large amount of sodium is a salty cracker. A whole grain cereal with 15 grams of added sugar per serving is a sugary cereal. The claim is about one attribute, and it is entirely compatible with the rest of the product being unremarkable.

The most reliable way to eat whole grains is also the one that avoids all of the above: stock a pantry with grains that were never flour. Oats, barley, brown rice, quinoa, bulgur, farro and whole wheat berries are sold as themselves, in bags, with an ingredient list of one item. Nothing on those bags needs decoding.