Bread: What to BUY/EAT and what to AVOID
Can’t have a series dedicated to nutrition without talking about everyone’s favorite (unless you have a gluten sensitivity) BREAD.
Instead of talking about a singular ingredient, I wanted to dive into several you want to avoid when making the right bread selection.
First up: unbleached or bleached enriched flour. You will most commonly see this in any white bread. Both unbleached and bleached mean that they take the whole grain used in bread, strip it down, and process it with chemicals, which removes all the nutritional value you get from the whole grain. This process is used to make the bread softer and whiter. The main difference between it being bleached vs. unbleached is that the bleaching process makes it whiter and softer than that of the unbleached.
Next: avoid any dough conditioners! These are chemicals used in the baking process to speed it up. Companies do this to produce their product quicker and more efficiently. This, like the enriched flour from before, spikes blood sugar levels and leaves you craving more and more bread as it leaves you feeling unsatiated.
There are MANY used, so I suggest doing your research, but I’ll list several below:
- ascorbic acid
- monoglycerides/diglycerides
- ammonium chloride
- diacetyl tartaric acid ester of monoglycerides or DATEM
Lastly, don’t be fooled by marketing tactics used by companies. When you see “WHEAT,” “NATURAL,” “MULTI-GRAIN,” more than likely, they aren’t actually all that good for you.
When making the right selection, you want to see “100% Whole Grain” to ensure you are actually receiving nutritional value from your bread. Along with that, follow these rules of thumb when looking at the nutrition label as you breakdown each slice of bread:
<2 grams of sugar
>2 grams of protein
>2 grams of fiber
Happy shopping!
P.S. if you are gluten-free, I included an option for you as well ;). @foodforlifebaking also has fantastic gluten-free options.
