The Truth About Bread
By: Alex Li San
Tags: Nutrition, Wheat, Rye Bread, Bread, Food

I love bread. I’m French after all, so I was raised with bread at every meal, including breakfast.

But bread is getting a bad rep these days and it is true that not every loaf is created equal.

So let’s separate the good guys from the bad guys and cut bread some slack.

Is there such a thing as bad bread?

Wheat flour is cleared of the bran and the germ layers during the process of grinding and milling. Stripped to the core, the grain is then used to make white bread, which is soft in texture and mild in taste.

This kind of bread has less fiber (only 1 gram per slice) and it’s packed with carbohydrates. While this doesn’t spell disaster on its own, the biggest problem with white bread is the use of additives.

Additives added to the dough encourage its growth but they also raise the glycemic index, so the feeling of satiety doesn’t last for very long.

White bread also lacks vitamins and minerals that are lost once the layers of the grain are removed. This means white bread is deprived of thiamin, niacin, folate, and iron.

If you live in the US, you should know that the FDA prescribes that vitamins and minerals get added back and “declared when they are added directly to the packaged food (e.g., enriched bread).”

But if you still want to be on the safe side, try and consume whole grain bread. Here is how you will benefit from it.

Whole grain bread and its benefits

Whole grain bread contains cereal grains that are added to the wholemeal flour, thereby achieving greater nutritional value. Whole-grain breads, including those made from rye or sourdough, contain about four times as much fiber as white bread.

They have a low glycemic index because the seeds and cereals need more time to get digested. This makes whole-grain the healthiest choice when it comes to bread.

After conducting extensive research on the effectiveness of the role of whole grain in therapy against type 2 diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and cancer, researchers discovered that “daily whole-grain intakes of 2 or 3 servings (30–45 g/day) can significantly reduce the incidence of developing type 2 diabetes”, as well as “significantly reduce the incidence of developing cardiovascular disease and stroke”.

Summed up, the benefits of whole-grain bread are:

Improved digestion

Sense of fullness

Blood sugar regulation

Lower blood pressure

Great source of vitamin B and essential minerals

Rye bread and its benefits

Rye bread is significantly coarser and heavier in texture than other types of bread. The reason is that it has a lower percentage of gluten, which makes it ideal for people with a gluten intolerance. Traditionally, rye bread is “made of whole-grain rye flour; thus, the dietary fiber (DF) content in the final bread is high […] approximately 10g/100g […] delivering approximately 2.5g per serving (25g).” (Katina et al. 2014)

Various types of rye bread are sold around the world, but you can also bake your own bread. It’s best to add seeds to it, especially sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, and linseeds. You can also add a few caraway seeds to spice it up.

The health benefits of rye bread are numerous. To begin with, high levels of fiber in the rye “result in several beneficial physiological changes, among them the reduction of bile acids, lowering of pH of the feces, and normalization of colonic microflora”. As a result, we significantly decrease the chances of developing colon cancer.

On a similar note, a study published in Trends in Food Science & Technology concluded that eating rye leads to better blood-sugar control. “Results from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) suggest that rye breads, in comparison with wheat-based products, reduce the demand for insulin, even when both provide equal amounts of available carbohydrates.”

The study went on to explain that high insulin levels cause a quick decrease in blood glucose levels and a high insulin response which, in return, triggers “the risk of chronic disease development”.

Health benefits of rye bread:

Improved digestion

Balanced hormones

Breast cancer prevention

Curbed appetite

Sourdough bread and its benefits

Unlike all other types of bread, sourdough is made with naturally occurring yeast and lactic acid bacteria during the process of fermentation. Lactic acid bacteria have an ability to release antioxidants during sourdough fermentation.

Other types of bread are made with baker’s yeast and they don’t keep the vitamins and minerals as much as sourdough does. The vitamins, minerals and various fibers t mostly depend on the flour in this case.

According to nutritionists, whole grain sourdough bread is definitely the healthiest. But you should pay attention when buying it. Specifically, some types of “sourdough bread” are not made from real sourdough, they just have the taste added artificially. So be sure to check the declaration and only buy the real deal.

Health benefits of sourdough bread:

Great source of vitamins, iron and selenium

Regulation of blood sugar and insulin levels

Beating bloat

Lastly, keep in mind that no matter how healthy any of these breads are, you still need to mind the portions. Eat them in moderation in order to reap the full-scale benefits. And if you’re not making the bread yourself, always read the label and the ingredients.

I hope this article was helpful. Keep in mind I’m not a nutritionist, I just love bread and did all this research to educate myself and make sure I make the right choice for my health.