Whole Wheat

I don't eat bread very much, but when I do, I try to eat the dense, grainy breads. The one pictured above is actually made without flour , it is all whole grains. I really enjoy a slice of this on occasion with some sugar free jam or natural peanut butter.

Marion Nestle is a wealth of knowledge, she has a column in the San Francisco Chronicle that I enjoy reading. Recently whe was asked about wheat breads and here is the extremely informative artice she wrote.


Q: I pay $4 for multigrain or whole wheat breads because I've heard white bread isn't as healthy. But when I compare nutrition labels, $2 white breads look much the same. Are they?

A: My Talmudic answer: yes and no. You are asking about commercial sliced breads. Bread may be the staff of life, but you would never know it from reading the ingredient lists of most commercial products.

Commercial breads are indeed much the same, with only a few differences that matter.

To decide whether these have anything in them worth eating beyond their calories, you must inspect labels to make sure the first ingredient is whole grain, the total number of ingredients is small and devoid of unpronounceable chemicals, the fiber content is at least 2 grams per 1-ounce serving and the label says 100 percent whole wheat. Anything less is reconstituted white bread with occasional pieces of the original grain added back.

And then there is taste. Artisanal breads begin with just four ingredients - flour, water, salt and yeast - and turn them into loaves so crusty, chewy and fragrant that you cannot stop eating them. If they have some whole grain in them, even better.

But handmade breads take forever to make and quickly go stale. Commercial bakeries deal with these problems by rushing the bread-making process and compensate for the loss of flavor by adding stabilizers, dough softeners and preservatives, and covering up the chemical tastes with sweeteners. Breads with 30 or more ingredients are not unusual and violate my rule: Never buy processed foods with more than five ingredients.

To compare breads, you must read labels. Bread companies do not make this easy. Some list the serving size as one slice, some two, and their weights can vary by twofold. When you convert everything to ounces, the nutrient content of supermarket breads looks much alike.

An ounce provides 70 to 80 calories, a trivial difference. The grain is what counts.

Wheat grains have three components - the nutrient-rich bran and germ ("chaff"), and the endosperm, which is mostly starch and protein. One hundred percent whole wheat flour contains all three in the same proportion as in the original grains.

White flour contains about 80 percent of the original components. It is mostly endosperm.

Nutrients in the chaff are lost, so bakers are required to replace the five nutrients least likely to be available from other foods: niacin, riboflavin, thiamin, folic acid and iron. The others are not replaced.

Neither is fiber. White flour contains only trace amounts of fiber.

Because high-fiber diets promote healthy bowel function and appear to reduce risks of heart disease and bowel cancers, dietary advice is to eat at least three daily servings of whole grains - 3 ounces of 100 percent whole wheat bread, for example.

Food labeling rules do not make it easy to figure out fiber content. Some white breads list 1 gram of fiber, but watch out for serving size. It takes two slices to reach half a gram, which can be rounded up to 1.

Whole wheat bread with 2 grams of fiber per 1-ounce slice may have four times as much fiber as white breads. But watch out for breads listing 3 grams fiber; their slices may weigh nearly 2 ounces.

In response to dietary advice, commercial bakeries have introduced whole grain breads acceptable to white bread eaters. These grind the wheat bran super fine, add extra dough conditioners to keep the bread soft, and toss in some bran or cracked wheat to make the bread look like whole wheat. Check for fiber grams and the position of chaff ingredients on the list. The further down the list, the smaller their contribution.

And where is the Food and Drug Administration to help with whole grains? Alas, the FDA has not set rules for grain content. It permits manufacturers to make statements such as "100 percent whole grain" as long as the statement is true and does not imply that the food is an "excellent source."

The FDA's nonbinding guidance says anything labeled "100 percent whole grain" must contain all three components of the original wheat seed, in proportion.

This regulatory gap permitted creation of the industry-sponsored Whole Grain Council. The council issues a certifying stamp in two forms: 100 percent and Basic. One hundred percent means all grains are whole. But the more prevalent Basic stamp allows refined grains and disproportionate additions of bran or germ.

Marion Nestle is the author of "Food Politics," "Safe Food," "What to Eat" and "Pet Food Politics," and is a professor in the nutrition, food studies and public health department at New York University. E-mail her at food@sfchronicle.com, and read her previous columns at sfgate.com/food.

This article appeared on page K - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/10/01/FDG51FIMTV.DTL#ixzz11QpVTxO4

Good Carbs Bad Carbs

What exactly are carbohydrates? There are many kinds, but when I say "carbs" I am referring to starchy carbs, things such as:

Beans, oats, brown rice, barley, black eyed peas, corn, corn tortillas, cream of wheat/rye/rice, kashi, lentils, peas, potatoes, yams, quinoa, rice cakes.

These are all good for you and they are the "carbs" that need to be weighed or measured. You should have one serving of these at every meal (except your last meal if you eat just before bed). Although when I am intentionally eating to gain weight, I will eat carbs at my last meal. In fact, I will increase all of my starchy carbs at each meal by 2 ounces and that does the trick! So you can see why you do not want to over eat carbs if you are trying to loose weight.

Vegetables and fruits are also "carbs" but they are not starchy carbs, they are packed with nutrients and fiber and have very little calories. You can eat these with abandon, eat as much as you like. So nutritionists do not generally refer to fruits and vegetables as "carbs", they will refer to them as "fruits" and "vegetables".

Two caveats:

Fruit is high in sugar, so if you are attempting to really lower body fat, these should be limited to a couple servings a day, and pre-competition, eliminated all together.

Some vegetables are classified as "starchy" carbs, you may have noticed them in the list above. Peas and corn. If you are eating these two, they count as your starch, not your vegetable so weigh or measure them.

All of the above complex carbohydrates (good carbs) are high fiber foods, which improve your digestion, they help stabilize the blood sugar, keep your energy at an even level, and help you feel satisfied longer after your meal.

A mistake I see occur quite frequently is someone thinks they are eating healthy, so they load up their plate with a big plain baked potato and an ear of corn...no, no, no! You can only choose one of those as they are both "carbs", you need a vegetable in place of one.

Now we have the simple (bad) carbohydrates, the ones that you need to limit or avoid all together. Which you chose depends on your goals. If you are competing, you won't eat anything on the list below for a few months before your competition. If you are not, then some of this is OK, in moderation.

Pasta, refined breads , crackers, cereals, chips, candy, anything made with flour, flour tortillas, fruit juice, sugar, corn syrup, any packaged food. Sugar and other simple carbohydrates can alter your mood, lead to cravings and compulsive eating, cause wide swings in your blood-sugar levels, and cause weight gain in most people. These foods also tend to be very high in calories.

I eat 6 times a day. My first meal is a shake (with 20 grams of carbs) and my last meal is egg whites and spinach, so "technically" it has no carbs.

The other 4 meals all contain one of the above starchy carbs. I eat a great deal of brown rice, quinoa, yams and beans at lunches and dinner. Breakfast usually contains oats or cream of rice.

I eat bread on occasion, but it is usually one of those dense, really dark, heavy rye or spelt breads and I toast it and put low sugar jam and/or peanut butter on it.

Remember the good carbs are the "fuel" that keeps you going, keeps your brain functioning, your muscles round and full looking. These are also the really tasty ones, like the big baked potato, so it is easy to over eat- hence the need to weigh them.

Remember, packaged food is the enemy! The more that a food has been altered from its natural state, the less nutrients it has and just becomes a lot of useless calories.