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In mid-July, the NVWA announced that of the nearly two hundred whole grain products they had investigated, more than a quarter did not actually comply with the rules for whole grain. Since then, the labels of almost all of the products in question have been changed or withdrawn from the market. But which rules do whole grain products have to comply with again?
The designation "whole wheat" is included in the Commodities Act Decree on Flour and Bread. Article 16 states the following:
The word "wholemeal" may and must be part of the designation of a product referred to in this Decree only to the extent that the starchy kernel, germ and bran of the cereal species in question are present in the product so designated in their natural proportions, whether or not after having undergone processing.
So this means that all the flour components in the product must be whole wheat. When flour or meal is present that is not wholemeal (even if it is only a few percent), the product may not carry the term 'wholemeal'. In the products the NVWA checked, this point was often not in order.
Even if a product may not bear the term "whole grain" due to the presence of other flours or flour, it may still be interesting to name the proportion of whole grain cereals. Fortunately, the NVWA shares a solution in the Handbook of Food Labeling; both the proportion of whole grain and non-whole grain can be named. Thus, rusk is then named "rusk with 75% whole wheat flour and 25% wheat flour. This may not look as good, but it complies with all the rules. Another option is to omit the term "whole grain" and instead use a nutrition claim to highlight the amount of fiber in the product. Of course, the requirements of Regulation 1924/2006 must then be met. For the claim 'source of fiber' this is a fiber content of at least 3 g/100 g or 1.5 g/100 kcal, and for the claim 'high fiber' at least 6 g/100 g or 3 g/100 kcal of fiber.
The legislation surrounding whole grain is not harmonized in the European Union, and not all countries have equally strict rules for the designation "whole grain. Germany, for example, has a limit of 90% whole grain for whole grain products, while products in Sweden and Denmark can be sold as whole grain as early as 50% whole grain on the flour component. So good to check when importing or exporting grain products.
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