London - From hot buttered toast to the simple sandwich, bread was once a staple of the British diet. But today it’s suffering from a serious image crisis – it’s become something of a health bogeyman, a food to be avoided.
Sales have been dropping since the ’70s.
Largely that’s because many people are now convinced they suffer from wheat intolerance or an allergy to gluten (the protein found in wheat). A survey by the University of Portsmouth last year found that one in five British adults believes they are allergic to a food, with most blaming wheat.
Bread is being held responsible for a range of symptoms, including fatigue, stomach pain, bloating and headaches.
Meanwhile, low-carb diets such as Atkins and Dukan haven’t helped either – claims that carbohydrates cause blood sugar levels to rise, preventing the body from burning fat, have put many off a lunchtime sandwich.
Yet despite this, bread is often the food people crave the most. Ask any dieter to name their greatest weakness and it will be toast in the morning or that irresistible basket of warm rolls on the restaurant table.
But is it really so bad for us? And why has our relationship with this basic food become so dysfunctional? We talked to the experts.
Your brain is hooked on bread:
Sometimes only a bacon sandwich will do – but why exactly is that? The simple answer is that bread appears to make us feel better.
“When carbohydrates such as bread are broken down to glucose, they trigger the production of the brain chemical serotonin, also known as the happy hormone,” says Helen Bond, of the British Dietetic Association.
That’s why a toasted teacake or muffin tastes so good at teatime.
“The body has a natural dip in serotonin levels around 4pm,” she explains. “Bread is a great way to give yourself a bit of a boost.”
The modern loaf we can’t stomach:
For some experts the day it all went wrong was in 1961 when something called the Chorleywood Baking Process was introduced – this breadmaking technique uses three times as much yeast as before and so reduces the time needed for fermentation.
It means a loaf can be baked in just one hour, and also has a longer shelf life – as a result 76 percent of the bread we eat today is made this way.
Unfortunately, critics say this reduced fermentation time means yeasts have less time to be broken down and therefore could upset the delicate balance of bacteria in the gut, triggering digestive problems.
Jonathan Brostoff, professor of allergies at King’s College, London, believes the so-called “one-hour loaf” may have more yeast and additives left in, meaning more risk of irritation. He is now looking at whether making breads in different ways affects the types of bacteria found in the gut and the impact on health.
Andrew Whitley, a baker with 30 years’ experience and author of the book Bread Matters, champions sourdough bread, which takes between 10 and 24 hours to rise and doesn’t require bakers’ yeast.
“Allowing bread to ferment this long ensures the proteins that make up the gluten are pre-digested so the stomach doesn’t have to work so hard,” he says. “This has been proven in the lab and in feeding experiments. I see a lot of people who say they can eat my bread, but not factory bread.”
We’re not built to eat so much:
Toast for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch and rolls for snacks – no wonder the average Brit still gets through the equivalent of 60 loaves a year, despite the overall drop in consumption.
Some experts say our digestive systems can’t cope with so much – explaining the rise in complaints such as irritable bowel syndrome and bloating.
“Gluten, a type of protein, makes bread what it is,” explains Professor Peter Whorwell, a gastroenterologist at Wythenshawe Hospital in Manchester. “Yet gluten is a large molecule that’s poorly digested by the gut and we don’t break it down very well.”
We make things worse by eating far too much bread.
“It’s become the number one convenience food. It’s everywhere.”
“Think of our beginnings as hunter gatherers,” adds Professor Brostoff. “We didn’t have wheat back then – we had meat, fish, fruit and vegetables. We weren’t really designed to eat all this wheat.”
Even if you limit yourself to one harmless-looking sandwich a day, you’re still likely to be eating more than you realise, says Catherine Collins, principal dietitian at St George’s Hospital in London.
“Often bloating is nothing to do with wheat intolerance and everything to do with portion size,” she says. “Ten years ago your average sandwich would be 60g of bread – two slices of 30g each. Now, bread often weighs more like 40g a slice, and if you’re slightly sensitive, two of those can be enough to trigger symptoms such as bloating and tummy pain.
“Paninis are deceptive too; they may look small, but actually contain a lot of bread, squashed down.”
What’s more, she adds, nowadays we often eat lunch on the go or at the desk – meaning it’s wolfed down too quickly and we feel stuffed afterwards.
White sliced could be good for you:
White bread is the loaf of choice for many Britons, taking up 50 percent of all sales. But because it has a high glycaemic index (GI) there’s concern that it releases its energy too quickly, raising blood sugar levels and insulin.
Some researchers believe this could help fuel diabetes.
There is a suggestion that this surge in blood sugar and insulin levels could even fuel cancer cell growth.
A study published in the International Journal of Cancer in 2006 found those who eat five slices of white bread a day are almost twice as likely to develop the most common form of kidney cancer compared with those who have one-and-a-half slices. Meanwhile, wholegrain foods, including wholemeal bread, have been shown to have a protective effect because they regulate the production of insulin.
But wholegrain is not necessarily best for everyone. We’re often told we need plenty of fibre for a healthy bowel. In particular, a high-fibre diet has long been prescribed for irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), a chronic bowel disorder affecting millions.
But Professor Whorwell, an expert in IBS, has different ideas. A study he carried out in the ’90s revealed that high-fibre foods such as bran, and wholemeal and granary breads actually worsened symptoms.
“Fibre is an irritant laxative, meaning if you’ve got an already irritable bowel it will irritate it further,” he says. “I often now put people with IBS on to white bread because it’s low in fibre, and 50 to 60 per cent of them improve.
“Brown bread may be good for you if you have a normal healthy gut, but if it is sensitive you may have to balance the pros and cons depending on how bad it makes you feel.”
Spreads make you fat:
Thanks to diets such as Dukan or Atkins, we tend to think of bread as “bad’ – under these regimens you either cut out or dramatically reduce your intake to help put the body into a state of ketosis in which it burns fat for energy.
But the tide may be turning. According to a new book, The Carb Lover’s Diet (which this year topped the New York Times bestsellers list) bread – specifically wholemeal – can actually help you lose weight.
“Studies show that resistant starch can help curb cravings, control blood sugar levels and boost metabolism,” say the authors.
Resistant starch is a compound found in wholemeal and rye breads as well as foods such as lentils, oats and potatoes. Unlike other foods it’s not absorbed into the bloodstream and instead is digested slowly – reportedly keeping you fuller for longer.
Dietitian Helen Bond says there could be some truth in this. “Resistant starch is digested in the large intestine, meaning it provides a slow steady release of fuel. Cut it out and you often find you’re flagging and more likely to crave a snack.”
Catherine Collins says that bread can also be a good source of vital nutrients such as calcium, adding that bread on its own is unlikely to cause significant weight gain. “The real problem is the high-fat things we eat with our bread. What about the slab of cheese in the middle of it, or the olive oil you dipped it in?” she says.
Is fibre, not wheat, to blame?
Hundreds of thousands of people are thought to have coeliac disease, an auto-immune condition where gluten causes the immune system to attack the lining of the small intestine – symptoms include diarrhoea, constipation and bloating.
Sufferers must be strict in avoiding gluten.
This is different from so-called “gluten intolerance”, linked to IBS, headaches and mood swings. The problem, say experts, is that people are self-diagnosing both conditions. In the case of gluten intolerance, Professor Whorwell thinks it could be the fibre in bread – not gluten – that’s the real problem if you have a sensitive gut.
“A lot of people put themselves on gluten-free diets and claim it makes them feel better. But I don’t think they feel better from cutting out gluten, it’s the cutting out fibre.
“And gluten-free products are now starting to add fibre, so in fact these people may find they’ll start to feel worse again and we’ll come full circle.”
More controversially, Professor Whorwell believes there is a “grey zone’ of people who just have a degree of sensitivity. – Daily Mail