Bread: Staff of Life or Health Disaster?

Bread has been an important part of the human diet since the dawn of agriculture thousands of years
ago. There is even evidence that humans ground wild grains on rocks to make flat bread 10,000s of
years ago. Yet bread the Staff of Life is now much maligned as a source of inflammation, obesity,
and purveyor of the dreaded gluten. Legions of health enthusiasts now avoid bread and books indicting
bread as a health fraud have become best sellers.
Where did it all go so wrong? Well, lets dissect the supermarket loaf for a closer look.
The raw material for bread is grain, usually wheat. Wheat has profoundly changed in the last 100 years.
Wheat varieties such as Red Fife widely grown in the later 1800s in Canada are landraces, highly
genetically diverse and able to adapt to local climates. 20
th
century varieties, the kinds that make up the
typical supermarket loaf, are hybrids, genetically uniform and designed for effective uptake of artificial
fertilizer and ideal growing conditions. There is growing evidence that modern hybrid wheat has
nutritional properties that increase problems with gluten (celiac disease is an immune response to
gluten and the rate of celiac has increased since the introduction of hybrid grains). Many people report
an intolerance to bread made with hybrid grains, yet can comfortably consume traditional landrace
varieties of wheat such as Red Fife, Spelt and Kamut. (Once celiac disease has developed, it is necessary
to avoid gluten containing grains and grain products.)
Another lesser known problem with supermarket wheat is the large number of chemical additives that
are used in bread flour often unlabelled. Yes, there are dozens of additives used for many purposes to
make an efficient and reliable industrial loaf, some of which dont have to be listed on the label. It
could well be that many people are sensitive to these chemicals and do well with Red Fife, Spelt, and
Kamut landraces, which are usually organically-grown and produced without this cocktail of chemical
additives.
Let me give you an example of just how bad this problem is. Subway, self-described purveyor of healthy
fast food (now theres an oxymoron for you!), was recently outed for its use of a chemical common in
the plastics and rubber industries and used to make pesticides. In bread it helps to make the loaf whiter
and fluffier, which is what we all want isnt it? I bet youve never seen azodicarbonamide on the label
at your local Subway. But of course, fast food companies dont want to divulge their trade secrets, do
they?
So avoiding supermarket bread with its modern hybrid wheat and chemical additives is unquestionably
a good idea. Instead choose organically-grown traditional landrace varieties and bread that is produced
organically with that cocktail of chemicals. But there are other features of supermarket bread that are
also a health hazard.
Grains have three parts: the germ with its good fats and high concentration of nutrients; the bran with
its fibre and minerals; and the endosperm with its starch and lower content of nutrients and beneficial
phytochemicals. For curious historical reasons, people came to make and prefer flour and bread that
contained only the starchy endosperm. Even whole wheat is flour made from the endosperm with only
a portion of the fibrous bran added back. Most supermarket loaves are made from whilte flour,
although its cousin the industrial whole wheat loaf has become a fashion in a misguided attempt at
better health.
It was Dr. David Jenkins, Canadas top nutrition scientist at the University of Toronto, who first studied
the effect of carbohydrates on blood sugar. He developed the concept of the glycemic load, a measure
of a foods potential to increase the level of sugar in the blood. Eating a diet with a high glycemic load is
not a good thing. Not surprisingly traditional foods have an overall low glycemic load, while common
supermarket foods contain many high glycemic foods, including the supermarket loaf.
Bread made from finely ground white flour contains few nutrients and beneficial phytochemicals and
can have a glycemic load comparable to drinking a glass of glucose. The whole wheat supermarket loaf
is only marginally better. Bread made from more coarsely-ground whole grain flour (containing all three
parts of the grain) is a nutrient dense food with much less impact on blood sugar. Of course, such loaves
are heavy, chewy and dense. You cant eat very much at once as they are quite filling. Isnt that the way
it should be? Unfortunately, we train children to prefer light fluffy bread that can easily be overeaten.
This promotes obesity and related health problems and can result in carbohydrate craving and
addiction.
Finally, let us explore the essence of bread making, the leavening. What makes bread so appealing is its
crust and crumb as bakers call them, that chewiness, texture and (sometimes) flavor that prove so
alluring. The supermarket loaf is leavened with yeast, an industrially produced organism that results in
that light and fluffy crumb which weve been trained to prefer. The yeast develops lightness but also
digests the complex starches and makes the sugars more easily digested. The supermarket loaf is also
tasteless and bland relative to traditionally-leavened, whole-grain loaves.
The traditional leavening agent was a combination of wild yeasts and bacteria that acted synergistically
to ferment and leaven the bread. Traditional sourdough bread has made a comeback in recent years in
the effort to recover the tastes, flavors and quality of slow food. Sourdough breads are indeed slow.
They take a long time to produce and are not suited for industrial processes of the modern supermarket
loaf. The long fermentation with wild yeasts and bacteria produces a loaf with excellent crust and
crumb, superior taste, and as recent research shows has many beneficial health properties.
Sourdough leavening helps to make nutrients more absorbable, but does this without increasing the
absorption of sugars. Sourdough bread has a lower glycemic load due to the production of organic acids
from fermentation, the same agents that develop the complex sour flavouring in traditional bread.
Organic acids help to slow the absorption of starches. Sourdough fermentation reduces problems with
grain components such as gluten that cause health problems in some people. Sourdough fermentation
can even reduce gluten levels in bread so completely as to be safe for celiac sufferers, according to
recent research.
Is bread the staff of life or health hazard? The supermarket loaf, with its yeast leavened, processed
hybrid grains, may indeed be a health hazard. Yet, the traditional whole-grain loaf, made from a
traditional landrace and slowly fermented with a sourdough culture is indeed the staff of life: full of
nutrients and phytochemicals, low in gluten and glycemic load, bursting with flavor and superior crust
and crumb. This is a loaf that you may find at your local artisan bakery, farmers market, or in your own
kitchen.