buying healthy bread

A Guide To Buying Healthy Bread (Part 1)

Buying bread use to be an easy task. It used to be purchased from a bakery that would freshly bake them every morning. Nowadays bread is commonly bought from the grocery store where there is as HUGE selection of different brands, sizes, taste, and labels. Do I want multigrain? whole wheat? white? gluten-free? And which is the healthiest one? This is what I want to talk about today!

If you eat the right foods, adopting a fasting lifestyle becomes the simplest thing in the world. The rule I like to use for fasting nutrition is to eat whole, natural, and unprocessed foods as often as you can. However, because bread is not a whole food (i.e. bread does not grow from tress, we actually have to make it), it is especially important to understand how bread is made so you understand the process and the ingredients in order to make an informed decision of which one is healthiest for you!

What’s the Difference: Whole-Grain vs. Refined

A grain of wheat is made up of three parts: the germ, endosperm, and the bran. Each layer contains different nutritional components of the grain. The germ contains B vitamins, some protein, and minerals. The endosperm contains starchy carbohydrates, proteins and small amounts of vitamins and minerals. The bran layer contains antioxidants, B vitamins, and ﬁbre. Now, these grains can be made into flour in one of two. The first is done by grinding the whole grain with all parts intact to make whole wheat flour. If you use this process but remove the bran and germ, you’ll get refined wheat flour. Since we previously discussed, the bran and the germ contain most of important nutrition of the whole grain, many of the vitamins, mineral, and phytonutrients are lost in the process of making refined flour. Now instead of fixing the root cause, manufacturers added back some (not all) the vitamins and minerals to enrich refined grains, so reﬁned products still “contain” nutrients and can be called enriched flour.

So if all wheat flour can be divided into whole or refined, where do all the labels and buzzwords come from? And what do they mean? These include, but are not limited to, buzzwords, such as multigrain, stone-ground, or gluten-free.

Understanding Bread Buzzwords

100% Wheat: This suggests that the bread is made with only wheat as opposed to another grain, or a combination of 2 or more grains. However, this does not tell us whether the bread was made of whole-grain flour or refined flour.
Multigrain: This suggests that the bread was made of flour from multiple types of grains, such as wheat, spelt, rye and/or barley. In addition to multigrain, similar terms might include 7-grain or 12-grain, however, this does also not specify if the flour was whole grain flour or refined flour.
Whole Wheat: This suggests that the bread was made of whole grain wheat flour including the germ, endosperm and the bran. This is ideal as it ensures the nutritional components were still intact when the flour was made.
Whole Grain: Much like whole wheat, the term whole grain implies that the germ, endosperm and the bran were all present in the flour. The difference is simply that this does not limit the bread to containing wheat, as it can contain any grain flour, or combination of grain flours, including spelt, rye, barley, oats, millet, etc…
Ancient Grains: Although there is no official definition of the term ancient grains, it is loosely defined as grains have been largely unchanged over the last several hundred years, or those that Western culture has ignored until recently. These typically include kamut, spelt, buckwheat, sorghum, teﬀ, millet, quinoa, amaranth and less common strains wheat. A bread made of ancient grains would simply be made of the flours of these grains, however, the term does not specify if the flour was whole grain flour or refined flour.
Gluten-Free: Gluten is a protein structure found in certain grains, however, there are many grains that do not contain gluten such as buckwheat, rice, corn and quinoa, so a gluten-free bread is simply made of flours from gluten-free grains.
Enriched: This might sound like a good thing, but enriched flours are typically refined flours that have been stripped of their germ and bran and therefore stripped of vital nutrients, phytonutrients, and fibre. Therefore enriched flour is simply refined flour that has had vitamins and mineral added back that were lost during the milling process.
Stone-Ground: This is in reference to how the grain itself was milled into flour. The term stone-ground indicates that the grain was intact when it was turned into flour (whole grain), as some commercial whole grain flours are made by separating the parts of the grain and putting them back together, which is less than ideal.
Sprouted Grain: This refers to the way the grains were prepared before the flour and bread were made. Sprouted bread is made from whole grains that have been allowed to sprout (or germinate), before being milled into flour. Sprouted grain are by necessity whole grains, since you can not sprout refined flour. The sprouting process helps to eliminate anti-nutrients and make the grains more easily digested when consumed.

Personally, when clients fast, I like to recommend using ancient grains (which are more commonly found in the East), gluten free grains, or sprouted grains when they first begin. Rice seems to be a better option than bread when fasting, however, I have seen spectacular results from people who continue to eat millet, amaranth, and chickpea flour. These are all common ingredients in Indian cuisine and can be found at most restaurants if you are unable to make it at home.

Now that we’ve discussed the definitions of what bread labels mean, and understand the processes that make different variations of bread, we can now continue to exploring what ingredients go into the making and what to avoid when looking at nutrition labels. Stay tuned for A Guide To Buying Healthy Bread (Part 2)!