So the First Family’s pulled up a patch of green turf and rolled out the red carpet for that dynamic dietary duo, fruits and veggies. Finally, fresh produce has a friend in the White House (except for beets, which, sad to say, the President declines to eat.)

But where is the Beltway ballyhoo for the third crucial ally in the Axis of Eat Well? It takes three pillars to form the plant-based diet we’re supposed to adopt if we want to save ourselves and the planet: fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. With all the publicity that the Grow Your Own movement has been getting, it’s high time to shine a light on America’s Grainy Day Woman, Lorna Sass, whose last book, Whole Grains Every Day, Every Way won a well-deserved James Beard award.

Sass’s new book, Whole Grains For Busy People, may be an innocently titled paperback with a cheery, wholesome-looking cover, but don’t be fooled; the recipes inside are out to subvert the way Americans eat.

And not a minute too soon, because while “white bread” has become synonymous with “bland,” it’s really not so benign as that; eating all those processed foods high in refined flour contributes to diabetes, obesity, heart disease and cancer.

The thing is, though, we’ve all grown so accustomed to white flour (and white rice) that many of us don’t know how to bake with whole wheat flour and have no clue what to do with whole grains like rye, barley, corn meal, and spelt. We think millet is for the birds, and associate brown rice with seitan worshippers.

Sass comes to the rescue with Whole Grains For Busy People, making it easy for folks to prepare quick, simple meals built around whole grains that you can cook up in half an hour. These grains may be foreign to your pantry, but they’re the staples that have sustained mankind for centuries. And they offer a wide range of tastes and textures infinitely more interesting than their pale, over processed cousins.

As Sass explains, refined flour only became the norm after manufacturers discovered that flour would keep indefinitely if you removed the bran and germ. Unfortunately, this process also removes “50 to 90 percent of the nutrients and phytochemicals” contained in whole grains. Whose shelf life would you rather shorten–your own, or your flour’s? Whole grains are not only high in nutrients, antioxidants and fiber, but because our bodies absorb them more slowly than refined grains, your body is spared the kind of spikes in sugar and insulin that can lead to diabetes and metabolic syndrome.

Whole Grains For Busy People is, like all of Sass’s books, crammed with useful information and tips as well as easy-to-make recipes. For all those folks who’ve tried whole wheat pastas and pastries in the past and found their texture lacking, Sass highlights culinary breakthroughs such as King Arthur’s white whole wheat flour, and provides a chart rating the new whole grain pastas that constitute a dramatic improvement over the “gummy, gritty or mushy” varieties you may have encountered in the past.