The Whiter the Bread, the Quicker You’re Dead

I wrote this post a long time back and decided to update it and re-post it. This information never gets old.

Sometimes you need to go deeper than just a “healthy recipe” and discuss the ingredients themselves. A little information about what we are eating can help us do the right thing in the kitchen.

Here below is a snip of info about WHITE FLOUR – and it just might add years to your life.

I am by no means perfect when it comes to eating healthy – but armed with the knowledge about what isn’t good to put in my body, it has made me feel GUILT when I make wrong choices. Knowing these things also empowers me to make right decisions more often than not.

I love the book this information came from. I enjoy statistics.

{I also needed a big reminder to eat more fish. Fish is great for you.}

Hopefully the next time you head to the supermarket, you will choose whole grains instead of white or refined stuff (make sure you are reading your labels – because “wheat” doesn’t mean “whole grain”).

If you haven’t tried it yet, Ezekiel bread is wonderful when you toast it (and it tastes great with the Brie Cheese recipe from my Medieval Feast post).

If you can’t bake it yourself, a readily available whole wheat bread would be Nature’s Harvest. They are one of the only wheat breads I can find at a convenient grocery store (including Wal-Mart) that doesn’t have high fructose corn syrup. Instead, they add brown sugar.

As for cookies, the Kashi brand of Oatmeal with Dark Chocolate are chocked full of whole grains. They are my new favorite treat when I need a grain in my diet and am having a sugar craving.

With tortillas, I try and stick to corn, and I use multi-bran tortilla “soft wraps” for my sandwiches if I don’t wrap them with lettuce. My favorite brand so far is La Tortilla Factory. It contains oat, whole wheat, soy, and milled flax. I don’t like soy in my foods (other than soy sauce which has barely any soy in it), so if you know of a great brand of whole grain tortilla wraps, let me know.

Ready to be shocked and possibly swear off white breads, crackers, pasta and cookies forever? Or at least make a concerted effort to limit them? Read on….

The Processing of Wheat for “Whiteness”

The processing of whole grains of wheat to white flour takes approximately twenty steps. The wheat kernel is composed of an outer layer called the bran. The bran is rich in B vitamins, minerals and fiber. The next layer is the wheat germ, which is the sprouting portion of the kernel. The wheat germ is a rich source of vitamins B and E. The next layer is the endosperm, which is the starch or food supply for the sprouting seed. The endosperm is approximately 80-85 percent of the grain. The germ is about 3 percent, and the bran about 15 percent.

Refined white flour is pure endosperm or starch. Both the bran and the germ have been removed, along with approximately 80 percent of the wheat’s nutrients. The endosperm has far lower B vitamin and mineral content than the germ and bran, and also significantly less fiber.

Not only have 80 percent of the nutrients been removed, but the milling process involves such high temperatures that the remaining grain is damaged by oxidation. Flour at the end of the refining process actually has a grayish appearance from the oxidation. That color, of course, would be offensive to most consumers. So, a chemical agent such as chlorine dioxide, acetone peroxide, or benzoyl peroxide is used to bleach the flour to make it white. This bleaching process destroys even more of the few vitamins that remain. In addition, the bleaches can react with fatty acids to produce peroxides that are toxic and that can cause free-radical reactions. (Just compare these bleach products to the labels on chemical bleaches in your home such as Clorox!) In all, the milling and bleaching processes used today remove some twenty-two important nutrients from our bread, including fiber, vitamins and minerals.

The white flour, however, looks cleaner and purer than dirty brown whole wheat flour. And, as a consequence, it is more appealing to the American public.

What about “enriched” bread? To these breads, bakeries usually place about four nutrients to the flour they use – thiamin, niacin, riboflavin, and iron. However, the vitamins they use are usually “coal tar derived” vitamins. Unfortunately, the end result is extremely little actual vitamin enrichment.

Low fiber bread that has been laced with a great deal of sugar and hydrogenated fat becomes paste-like in the intestines. This, in turn, leads to constipation, which in turn may lead to gastrointestinal disease such as irritable bowel syndrome, diverticulosis, diverticulitis, and hemorrhoids.

“But”, you may be saying, “I only have a couple of slices of white bread a day.” Oh really? Are you counting the buns for your hamburgers and hot dogs? Are you including crackers, bagels, pretzels, and many pasta and cereal products, which are also made of white flour? Remember, the most commonly eaten foods in America are white bread, coffee, and hot dogs.

– excerpt from “What Would Jesus Eat? – The Ultimate Program for Eating Well, Feeling Great, and Living Longer.” by Don Colbert, M.D. (also the author of ‘Toxic Relief’)

So as you can see… WHITE FLOUR IS BAD FOR YOU.

My flour purist friends would tell you that ALL PROCESSED FLOURS (including store bought whole grains) are bad for you. According to my friends who grind their own flours and bake their own breads and other things from scratch, oxidation of the oils and nutrients in the flour happens in less than a week – so a store-bought grain item would already have lost a large quantity of its goodness.

I’m all for baking from scratch and grinding your own flours, but I don’t have the money yet to invest in a mill – or bread cutter – or any of the other tools I might need… so I try and make the healthiest choices I can with store bought items; for now, anyway!

{ Here’s to healthier eating in 2013 and beyond! }

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