Grains are also used to refer to grains other than rice and flour as coarse grains, and coarse grains also refer to food crops, so grains are also a general term for food crops.

Grains refer to five kinds of grains. Books earlier than The Analects of Confucius, such as The Book of Songs and The Classic, have only "100 grains" but no "five grains". At the beginning, people often gave several different varieties of a crop a proper name one by one, so there were many lists.

Moreover, the word "hundred" here is only used to refer to many meanings, and there is no real one hundred. The appearance of the word "five grains" shows that people have a clear concept of classification, and it also reflects that there were five main food crops at that time.

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The significance of health preservation

Nutrition believes that the best diet is actually a balanced diet. The first principle of a balanced diet requires that foods be as diverse as possible. One is variety, that is, try to eat all kinds of food, such as grain, meat, beans, milk, eggs, vegetables, fruits, oil, fat and so on; The other is the diversity of species, that is, we should try to eat all kinds of food, such as pork, beef, mutton, chicken, fish, rabbits, ducks and so on.

The same is true of grain. Eating only polished rice and white flour and coarse grains, such as millet, corn, buckwheat, sorghum and oats, is not in line with the principle of dietary balance. There is an understanding of this ancient book of Chinese medicine, Huangdi Neijing, which says that "five grains are the supplement, five fruits are the help, five animals are the benefit, and five dishes are the supplement". Among the five grains, rice and wheat are generally considered to belong to flour and rice;

Coarse grains refer to other grains except rice and wheat, that is, corn, buckwheat, oats, millet, sorghum and potatoes mentioned above. Some trace elements in miscellaneous grains, such as iron, magnesium, zinc and selenium, are more than those in flour and rice. These trace elements are of great value to human health. The contents of potassium, calcium, vitamin E, folic acid and bioflavonoids in coarse grains are also richer than those in flour and rice.

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