The Right Way With Grains

It’s early on a gorgeous Sunday morning, and all across America, families are heading out to grab a hearty breakfast at their preferred local quick-serve restaurant chains.

At McDonald’s, the order of the day is a new-model, egg-white McMuffin served on a high-fiber, multigrain English muffin whose slightly sweet, toasted, nutty flavor offers a pleasing twist on the venerable breakfast sandwich.

Taco Bell, meanwhile, is proudly offering a range of whole-grain breakfast burritos, featuring eggs, tomatoes, onions, peppers, and light cheese wrapped in a whole-wheat tortilla.

Across town, Panera is serving up something truly novel: a hot, handheld maple-cinnamon oatmeal stick served in a foil wrap with a choice of fresh-fruit dipping sauces—fresh blueberry, strawberry, peach, and apricot.

And finally, there’s Pizza Hut, whose whole-grain flatbread breakfast pizzas layered with egg, cheese, turkey bacon, and fresh vegetables are giving customers plenty to crow about in the morning.

As it happens, this is more a vision of the future than a survey of the current quick-serve breakfast landscape, but it provides a window to how chains could, without upending their existing kitchen schemes or ingredient mixes, deliver breakfasts that are both enormously satisfying and highly nutritious.

Until recently, any restaurant purporting to serve a hearty breakfast would have to follow through with the obligatory high-calorie, high-fat, high-cholesterol standbys: massive omelets packed with cheese, meat, and potatoes; a heaping mound of pancakes slathered in butter and syrup; Belgian waffles drenched in fruit and whipped cream; and so on.

But “hearty,” as it happens, need not be synonymous with “heavy” and “unhealthy.” That’s thanks in large measure to the increasing prevalence and popularity of whole-grain products ranging from hot and cold cereals, to pastries, to breads, and other carriers.

Many of the world’s leading packaged-foods manufacturers, mindful of the nation’s obesity epidemic, are looking at replacing traditional enriched flours with higher-fiber whole-grain alternatives that, besides being healthier, also do a better job of filling us up. Because foods made with whole grains don’t cause glucose and insulin levels in the bloodstream to spike the way products made with enriched, heavily processed flours do, they tend to keep us feeling more satisfied—even satiated—for longer periods. A simple shift to whole-grain carriers would allow quick-serve chains to offer consumers a whole new kind of hearty breakfast—one that stands to win them new morning customers while burnishing their reputations as responsible stewards of the public’s health.

Some major chains have already stepped up efforts to introduce more whole grains into everyday offerings. At Au Bon Pain, for instance, Executive Chef Thomas John has led a charge to place more whole-grain breads and cereals among his stores’ more traditional a.m. fare. At a recent panel discussion at QSR’s Dine America conference, John mentioned that Au Bon Pain’s breakfast line could soon include the likes of the ancestral grain quinoa, as well as muesli and other natural whole-grain cereals. Corner Bakery already offers oatmeal and Swiss muesli, while Asian-bun purveyor Wow Bao is taking things to a slightly more exotic level with its High Energy Oatmeal flecked with goji berries, Chinese red dates, and red rice.

Elsewhere, Panera and Subway both boast whole-grain rolls, breads, buns, and other selections as alternatives to the enriched norms, while Papa John’s makes all of its pizzas available on whole-wheat crusts. And at Jamba Juice, consumers recently got their first taste of a new line of smoothies formulated to be eaten with a spoon. The chain’s Granola Toppers consist of blended fruit, low-fat yogurt, and soymilk served under a bed of organic granola.

The great news is the shift to whole-grain carriers doesn’t have to entail a dramatic change to a product’s sensory profile. ConAgra’s Ultragrain whole-wheat flour looks, tastes, and performs like regular white flour, but packs the fiber content and low-glycemic advantages of a whole-grain variety. Wonder Bread-loving kids generally don’t notice a difference, but their nutrition-conscious parents certainly do.

The upshot of all this whole-grain mania is that quick-serves now have the ability to lead the charge for better nutrition in the morning simply by making a few choice revisions to their ingredient mixes. Using more whole-grain flours in everything from bagels to English muffins can substantially enhance breakfast products’ nutritional profiles, while the creative addition of elements such as whole-grain cereals—granolas, muesli, oatmeals, etc.—could lure a whole new group of converts to the quick-serve breakfast routine.