How Many Grains Do We Need?

Remember the good old days, when bread was bread?

Came in two flavors, white and whole wheat.

Then, we were greeted with a few new options on the old sliced bread menu. Seemed innocent enough at the time. "Oat Bran" was big for awhile.

Then they got daring and offered some kind of ubiquitous "multi-grain".

Now, no one really cared what the multi-grains were. It was like, "Cool. Grain is healthy. I guess many grains are really healthy".

But then, the grains kept on multiplying.

Two grain. Three grain. Then it just like exploded to five grain.

I didn't know there were five grains. I know there's wheat. That's a grain, right? Are oats a grain?

Okay, so I'm good up to two grain. If oats are a grain.

Now there's nine grain bread. Seriously.

I mean, are they just sitting in a lab somewhere creating new strands of grain, just to bulk up bread?

Is wheat no longer nutritious enough? I don't get it.

I bought a loaf of the nine grain. Its chewy.

Very chewy.

My three year old had toast made from nine grain and fell asleep before she could finish gnawing through her first bite.

I bit down on one of the nine grains (I'm not sure which one) and the grain-thingamajig didn't like, break.

My teeth just went sort of like "clunk" on the grain. It didn't budge.

I was scared. So I just swallowed it. Whole.

Are these new grains edible, or have they been manufactured just so we can get the grain count up in to hundreds.

Stopped by the store yesterday.

There's now fifteen grain bread. 15.

I couldn't help myself and had to buy it.

But I couldn't lift it off of the shelf. It was too dense. Too full of life-sustaining grains, I guess.

I could see the grains through the plastic wrapper. They looked big. Like the grains were on grains. I thought I heard them whispering and I saw the bag shake a little.

So I left.

On the way out I got a Snickers bar. Snickers is made from chocolate. Which starts from a bean, right?

So for now, I'm sticking to things only made from beans. Which basically means I live on Snickers bars and coffee.

That's fine, I'm pretty wired from all the caffeine and sugar.

Which may come in handy in case I have to wrestle a loaf of fifteen grain bread sometime.

They're coming, trust me.