Milling & Baking News - August 25, 2009 - 22

Signature Interview 

conference in 2002 to discuss the issue
with dieticians, scientists and bread
bakers. It was at this meeting in 2002
that Mr. Gifford said Mike Orlando
of Sunnyland Mills and Jeff Dahlberg
of the National Sorghum Producers
pinned him down and said "You just
can't talk about it, you have to do
something about it."
"At the very end of the meeting they came up behind me with a
bucket of grain and poured it over
my head," he recounted. "They said,
'That's whole grain. You have to get
that into people's minds.'"
Using Oldways' experience with
getting the Mediterranean Diet off the
ground floor, Mr. Gifford said a similar tack was taken with whole grains.
"We spent a long time trying to figure out what the industry was doing
because there weren't a lot of statistics around in the early 2000s about
whole grains," he said.
Ultimately, the group decided the
best approach for encouraging whole
grains intake was partnering with
industry.
"This was key," he said. "To work
with people who were already making whole grain products and selling
them. Bob's Red Mill, for example.
They had a very small niche, but they
were there, and they had great products and great packaging."
Ultimately, he said Oldways was
able to bring the industry people together, forming the Whole Grains
Council in 2003.
"But it takes a long time," he said
of the whole grains initiative. "It
takes the right people, the right idea,
the right messages. We're still in the
middle of it, or perhaps the beginning of it. To be honest, I don't know
where we are."
At one time Oldways, and Mr. Gifford in particular, was described as
22 / August 25, 2009 Milling & Baking News

"a critic of refined white flour" for
promoting whole grains while decrying white flour-based products
as unhealthy. While still espousing the benefits of whole grains,
Mr. Gifford was not willing to bash
refined grains.
"I think it's like everything else in
life, it's about balance," he said in explaining the role of different grains
in the diet. "It's not about shutting
down one or the other. I don't think I
want a whole grain wedding cake if I
ever get remarried. I don't think you
have whole grain communion wafers
(as an extreme example). There is
room for everything in the healthy dietary pattern. I think what happens is
the people who take the extreme position that you can't have white bread
anymore are the ones who are part of
the reason why Americans eat poorly.
Because you have these camps that
exclude as opposed to give permission to eat wisely what you want, but
not all the time. So when people say
you can't have white bread you lose
75% of the population who wants it
and will eat it and they want a white
hot dog and hamburger bun.
"We have never tried to say - I
don't believe - that people should
never eat white bread or white cake
or white muffins. I hope we haven't.
You may have caught us at a bad time.
"I do think absolutism is self-defeating in dietary education and food
education."
Stamp makes a splash
From a consumer messaging standpoint, the W.G.C. has hit a home run
with its Whole Grain Stamp, which
was introduced in January 2005. The
2,800 products that bear the stamp
feature one of two designs - the "Basic" stamp is for any food that contains at least 8 grams of whole grain

content, and the "100%" stamp for
food that contains all whole grains
and at least 16 grams of whole grain
ingredients.
The importance of the stamp has
not been lost on Mr. Gifford.
"I believed we had to put some
type of flag on the packages if we
could ever make it happen," he said.
"Otherwise it's an intellectual construct. I really drive our people at
Oldways to 'be real.' If you believed
like I did that there were more people
who wanted to eat whole grains than
knew how to do it, then you want
to help them. You don't need to lecture them, you want to help them.
And the way to do that was to help
them quickly spot whole grains. In
this case, a symbol." "While Oldways
was proceeding on the premise that
the stamp would be featured principally on niche products, he credits
Stephen W. Sanger, former chairman,
president and chief executive officer
of General Mills, Inc., Minneapolis,
for an important and difficult breakthrough with mainstream consumer
packaged companies.
He acknowledged that the company had no "inside route" with
General Mills. So Sara Baer-Sinnott,
executive vice-president of Oldways
and director of the W.G.C., decided to
contact Mr. Sanger.
He recalled, "I said to her, 'Are
you crazy?' She found his e-mail and
wrote him."
They were invited to Mr. Sanger's
office for a meeting.
The council had been reaching out
to General Mills, without success, for
months, and Mr. Gifford was skeptical, even though Mr. Sanger was a
gracious host during a brief private
meeting.
"He explained he had some of his
colleagues in the private conference
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Milling & Baking News - August 25, 2009

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