White bread may be healthier than artisanal loafs

PETA BEE
July 25, 2017
The Times

Did you think white bread was toast? If you consider yourself a healthy eater and have been consuming bread at all, it probably has been anything but the soft, white supermarket variety and instead something as far removed from the polythene-packed and bleached sliced loaf as you can find. Our daily bread has become more aspirational in recent years — market analyst Kantar Worldpanel reported that sales of all ready-wrapped loaves were down by 50 million units in the 12 months to May last year.

Even those who refuse to spend $10 or more at an artisan bakery for a slow-proved sourdough loaf fermented with a live starter of wild yeasts have been eschewing the once mighty white. Surveys show white bread sales in Britain have fallen 75 per cent since 1974 while brown and wholemeal have risen by 85 per cent, understandable given how often we have been warned that white bread is the enemy of our waistlines and causes bloating.

Yet in a study published recently in the journal Cell Metabolism, researchers from the Weiz­mann Institute of Science in Israel suggest that white bread may not be as bad for us as we think. For their trial, the researchers examined how quickly blood sugar levels rose when for a week habitual bread eaters ate whole-wheat sourdough, beloved of foodies for purportedly being less of a digestive burden because of the natural culture of beneficial bacteria it contains, or plain white bread.

What the scientists expected to see were uniformly undesirable spikes in blood sugar levels after the more refined and highly processed white bread was eaten. Bizarrely, they witnessed nothing of the sort. While blood sugar levels shot up in some people who ate the white bread, in others it spiked more drastically when they had eaten sourdough. About half of the people had a better blood sugar response to the processed white bread while the other half reacted more favourably to the sourdough.

What’s more, the team found “no significant differences between the two breads” when they examined the effect on gut health and the number of good bacteria in the participant’s microbiome.

Eran Segal, a computational biologist who led the investigation, says: “The initial finding, and this was very much contrary to our expectation, was that there were no clinically significant differences between the effects of these two types of bread on the parameters that we measured. We looked at a number of markers and there was no measurable difference that this type of dietary intervention had.” 

Far from being an outright enemy to health, white bread was apparently a better all-round choice for some people.

Slowly, it seems, white bread is rising against the tide and some high-profile advocates are adding to its popularity. In his recent book, The Plant Paradox, renowned American heart surgeon and cardiologist Steven Gundry recommends white bread over seemingly healthier varieties because it contains fewer lectins, so-called anti-nutrients that he says can cause headaches, gastrointestinal symptoms and weight gain.

“If you must eat bread, make it white bread over wholegrain, seedy or wheat germ varieties, which are lectin-loaded,” Gundry has said.

It’s even beloved of the truly body beautiful. Joe Wicks, the hard-bodied trainer whose catchphrase is “lean in 15”, says white bread can be “a great post-workout option as it’s rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream to refuel the body”. Athletes swear by it as an easily digestible energy boost before and after training.

Will Usher, the triathlon coach who got Gordon Ramsay into shape for the 2013 Hawaii Ironman Triathlon, says white bread is fine for people who exercise a lot. “Refined carbs are really useful when consumed to best effect for fuel such as before hard exercise,” he says.

It’s all a far cry from the mes­sages put forward during the past decade by the anti-white-bread movement, sparked not just by fashionable diets such as the Atkins or glossy, gluten-fearing bloggers but also by studies that suggested it was ingrained in the dietary downfall that has resulted in such high levels of obesity. Three years ago researchers in Spain found that young subjects who ate three slices of white bread a day were 40 per cent likelier to be obese or overweight five years later when compared with people who ate it once a week. They found no such link with weight gain in people who ate wholemeal bread.

And in January this year two studies published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggested that substituting refined grains with whole grains in the diet — which included switching from white to wholemeal bread — could increase calorie burning by speeding up metabolism. 

Little wonder we dumped white bread in our droves, despite the British Dietetic Association maintaining that sliced white bread was often fortified with vitamins and minerals and was a particularly good source of calcium: four slices provide one-third of your daily needs. And while bread remains the largest contributor to salt in the British diet, it is not only white bread that is responsible. According to campaigning group Consensus Action on Salt & Health, manufacturers of sliced white bread have reduced salt levels by 17 per cent in recent years, yet some artisan varieties provide as much salt per slice as you would find in a packet of ready-salted chips.

“It’s not white bread in itself that should be demonised,” says Dimple Thakrar, a BDA spokeswoman. “Too high a consumption of any refined and overly processed carbohydrates is not a good thing, but white bread has its virtues and is a perfectly acceptable addition to your meals in moderation. I often eat it myself because it tastes good.”

Scientists are beginning to agree. Although the latest study from Israel was small (it involved 20 people), it is not the first to suggest that white bread has redeeming features. 

In 2014 Spanish scientists reporting in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry found that white bread was better at boosting levels of beneficial gut bacteria than citrus fruits including oranges. According to University of Oviedo biologist Sonia Gonzalez, who led that pilot trial, the presence of resistant starch in white bread was one of the factors that increased levels of the good bacteria lactobacillus in the gut. And in 2010, research at Lund University in Sweden revealed that bread baked with white rye flour, made from the inner, white part of the rye kernel, produced better insulin and blood sugar levels compared with whole-wheat bread containing rye bran. 

Such is the food snobbery surrounding white bread that it remains a guilty secret for many. Yet, hands up, I keep a loaf of it in my freezer for moments when a freshly baked, multigrain loaf just won’t satisfy my carb cravings. And, of course, children love it. Could we really be facing the unthinkable, that on our shopping lists white bread will be replacing loaves made with spelt, sprouted grains and German rye?

Megan Rossi, a research associate in gastrointestinal health at King’s College London who runs a gut health clinic on Harley Street, says white bread has had a bad rap for too long. “It’s not bad for you,” she says. “Broadly speaking, white flour used to make any white bread is less nutritious as it provides 25 per cent less protein and is lower in 15 other key nutrients than wholegrain flour, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy white bread in our diet when we fancy.”

USE YOUR LOAF: the benefits of our daily bread

SOURDOUGH: Made using a “starter” mixture that is soured through a fermentation process. Produces natural probiotics that are beneficial to gut bacteria, although the latest study suggests only some people benefit 

RYE: Made with flour from the rye kernel and found in one study, published in The Journal of Nutrition, to maintain bowel regularity better than whole-wheat bread 

MULTIGRAIN: Made from a mix of flours containing wheatgerm, kibbled grains and wholegrains, it is particularly high in fibre and contains more vitamin E than many breads

WHITE: Lacks fibre, but sliced white bread is fortified with calcium. The latest study suggests that it can promote healthy gut bacteria as effectively as sourdough for some people 

DIET BREAD: Lower in calories but this is often just because the slices are smaller than average

The Times