Growing up in a family with 4 kids and not huge amounts of money meant that bread was simply the easiest, cheapest meal for all of us. Let's face it, if not bread, what else would you put in a child's school lunchbox to sustain them for the day, and what would you give them for breakfast and a mid-afternoon snack, that was quick and convenient, especially if you weren't around to make their food for them? Most kids can make a sandwich. They're pretty easy to make and totally uncomplicated. They have also been touted as a health food so, surely, we're doing the right thing?
That's where I have to disagree. A childhood filled with endless slices of bread left me, eventually, with a grain intolerance that continues to this day. Most people think that food intolerances just happen. That is not usually the case though. They build up over time, after repeated exposure to the offending food and then, suddenly, your body says ENOUGH and it let's you know in the form of skin infections and a permanently unsettled stomach and sometimes worse. These days, more and more kids are developing allergies and intolerances to grains. It seems strange, doesn't it? It's not really though, if you understand a bit about grains.
Bread is predominantly made with wheat and wheat is a grain (just in case you weren't sure!) Other grains used frequently in pretty much EVERYTHING are rye, corn, barley, rice and oats. Most people will choose to rather eat those grains, thinking they are the healthier option, but I'll tell you why I think they are all not great choices. To do that I need to go off on a bit of a tangent.
Animals have been given the means to protect themselves by camouflage, or by being proficient at climbing or running. Plants are really no different. They need to protect themselves from predators, like us. All grains have little self-preservation shields in the form of lectins and phytates. Lectins are toxins and they are pretty much the reason that people develop intolerances to grains. They damage the colon lining and, once your colon lining is damaged, you will have huge difficulty absorbing nutrients and that will lead to all sorts of future trouble. That is the immediate danger, but, in the longterm, lectins can lead to colon cancer. Lectins also causes lectin resistance, which means that your hunger signal is suppressed and THAT means, shortly after eating grains, your body will start to feel hungry again. It never really feels satisfied. I'm sure a lot of you know what that feels like? Add that to the sugar crash and you have a recipe for disaster.
The other defense mechanism that grains contain are phytates. Incidentally, they are also found in nuts and seeds, in smaller amounts. Phytates bind to nutrients and literally steal those nutrients from your body. To explain that a bit, if you look on a bread packet, it lists all sorts of nutrients that the bread contains, like fibre and calcium and vitamins etc. But, when you eat that slice of bread, the phytates IN the bread spring into action and bind to all the nutrients that are also in that slice of bread and suddenly, those nutrients are no longer bio-available to your body meaning your body simply can't absorb them. As a result, you get no nutrients out of that meal. You can imagine that, if you eat lots of bread, day in and day out, those grains will actually end up starving your body of nutrients. Sounds dramatic, but it's the simple truth.
Some grains also contain gluten (Most of us have heard that word by now. It's become very trendy to label things as gluten-free these days) Here's what's scary about gluten: Giadin is one of gluten's constituents and our bodies literally see giadin as an intruder, so it secretes an antibody called antigiaden to try and fight off this "intruder". About 30% of the population have noticeable amounts of antigiadin in their stools and it's NOT a good thing. It means that your body is actively, and constantly, doing battle and that you already have a low level of chronic inflammation, which is pretty much the source of most, if not all, modern diseases. Gluten also has a strange ability to mimic certain proteins and to infiltrate the cells in your body. Once it's done that, it then wreaks havoc causing you to develop autoimmune diseases where the body literally attacks itself. An example of that is Chron’s disease.
What is so scary is that, THIS is what we have all been told to eat for YEARS:
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| This is the food pyramid recommended by governments everywhere, for years |
Do you see what's at the bottom of this pyramid? 6-11 SERVINGS OF GRAINS!! No wonder people the world over are getting sick, and fat! You can see from what I've said so far, that grains do NOT like our bodies and our bodies do not like grains. They are toxic to us. Grains were only introduced into our diet in the last 10 000 years when agriculture really took root (scuse the pun;) Before that, we didn't eat grains. Our genes are simply not programmed to digest grains.
So why have we been encouraged to eat as much grain as possible? Well, grains are the cheapest, easiest crops to grow in huge amounts and, let's face it, they fill people up for, at least, a while and they can be used to make just about anything from oils to sugars to every kind of dessert and bread and so many other things. Every processed food on the planet contains some kind of grain unless it specifically says "grain-free" and, while, gluten-free may be catching on, grain-free is still a long way off because, let's face it, can you imagine a world trying NOT to eat any grains. People would feel like they were starving to death simply because they would have NO IDEA what to eat! If you go to a takeaway, your options are a burger, a wrap, maybe something with rice or chips and then there will be a salad option. How many of you go for the salad option when you get a takeaway, seriously? (Ironically, it's usually not a healthy option anyway because those salads are laden with chemicals and salad dressing) The chips will be loaded with transfats and everything else is a grain! The answer: stay away from takeaways;)
It's unbelievable how someone, somewhere has managed to con a whole planet into thinking something is good for them when it actually isn't. Isn't that the way though? We see an advert on tv marketing a new health food and we all run out to buy it by the truckload. We buy into propaganda so easily. Why? Because it's easier than having to think for ourselves. Life is busy and we all have too much to do. Besides, surely the powers that be have our best interests at heart? You know the answer to this: they have their OWN interests at heart, namely the money in their pockets. That health food will be loaded with transfats, corn syrup and various other chemicals, all in the name of making it tasty enough for you to eat while keeping it "low-fat" and essentially, making it poison to your body. Its ingredients have been sourced by means that give NO relief whatsoever to the environment or any animals that might have been involved in it. It's all about the bottom line: money.
I've talked about grains in bread, but what about all the other rubbish that goes into a loaf of bread? Yes, bread is a processed food. It's not natural at all, despite how many seeds you can see on the loaf that are supposed to make it look healthier. It's not baked in a grandmother's oven using only 3 nutritious ingredients. Anything that needs to have a long shelf-life is NOT good for you. It's made with a horror-filled list of ingredients that goes something like this:
- Flour - Less than half of breads sold contain whole wheat flour, most are refined flours. Refined foods lead to insulin resistance issues and diabetes.
- Salt - This is not the healthy kind of mineral salt, it's common, poisonous table salt.
- Yeast - a common contributor to candida
- Soybean oil - used to make the texture smoother and richer in flavor (and calories!) They extend shelf life, preventing bread from going stale. Soybean is used the most as it's the cheapest. You thought Soy was healthy? Read this and think again.
- Wheat gluten - Gluten gives the bread more structure and makes it chewier but is it worth it if you know the dangers of gluten now?
- Calcium sulfate- better known as plaster of paris?! It shortens dough rising times which speeds up production, it increases shelf life and makes the dough easier for their machinery to process.
- Mono and di-glycerides, ethoxylated mono and di-glycerides - These are proven to increase your risk of cancer and to cause birth defects.
- High-fructose corn syrup- used as a sweetener and to help the dough rise and also just shockingly bad for you.
- Calcium propionate - a preservative that inhibits mold and bacterial growth. In the early 1990′s it was linked to attention deficit disorder in children.
- Soy lecithin – Used to improve shelf life and, again, I urge you to reconsider soy.
- Sodium stearoyl lactylate - This is an ingredient also used in beauty products. It is a carcinogen and can harm the nervous system.
- Monocalcium phosphate - This is also used as a paint preparation for steel enamel but hey, it makes a good preservative...
- Ammonium sulfate - this is used to make the bread rise faster but it's actually primarily used in fertilizers?!
- Ascorbic acid – this is vitamin C which should be good for you but, ironically, it’s not added for your health. It's to create a slightly acidic environment for the yeast to ferment better to speed up the rising time. That means it's a low grade kind of vitamin C anyway.
- Azodicarbonamide – a chemical used in the production of foamed plastics. It also bleaches the flour (makes it whiter). It’s banned in Europe because studies show it could cause asthma or allergic reactions.
- Diacetyl Tartaric Acid Esters of Monoglycerides - a study in 2002 showed it caused “heart muscle fibrosis and adrenal overgrowth”.
However, I can't help you when it comes to store bought bread. My advice? Avoid it like the plague!
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