“Imitation Bread—Stuff of Lies” is what a best-selling author calls today’s white bread. “It’s a bizarre combination of the least-nutritious part of the wheat grain and a number of artificial chemicals, which can be harmful.”
What’s wrong with white bread?
Basically, what’s wrong is what the milling process does to wheat. A grain of wheat is made up of an outer covering (bran), an embryo (wheat germ), and the endosperm.
The bran holds most of the fiber, generous amounts of vitamins and minerals, and a bit of protein.
The germ is a rich source of B and E vitamins, several minerals, and fiber.
The endosperm, which makes up roughly four-fifths of the whole-wheat kernel, contains mostly starch. It is the only part used in making white flour. Ironically, the nutritious bran and wheat germ, which are removed during the milling process, are sold for animal feed.
The food industry further compounds the nutritional problems by using several artificial chemicals, such as:
• Propylene glycol (antifreeze) to keep bread white.
• Diacetyl tartaric acid (an emulsifier) to save on shortening.
• Calcium sulfate (plaster of Paris) to make it easier to knead large batches of dough.
So, no more white bread?
No bread is all bad. Even the white, fluffy stuff is a high-starch and low-fat food. It’s just that some breads are much better than others.
Take fiber, for instance. A slice of white bread has about a half gram of fiber while a slice of 100 percent whole-wheat bread contains two grams, and some whole-grain breads contain as much as four grams of fiber per slice. This means you’d need to eat eight slices of white bread to get the fiber of one slice of whole-grain bread.
How about enriched bread?
During the milling of wheat, some 20 known minerals and vitamins are largely removed. When nutritional deficiency diseases emerged some years back as a result of commercial milling, the industry started an enrichment program. Four of the nutrients were restored—thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, and iron—and the bread was renamed “enriched.” However, in most cases, not much was or has been done about the other nutrients lost or reduced in the milling process.
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