Bread, the Staff of Life?

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I’ve met many people, including myself, who have found digestion improves and unwanted pounds disappear when bread is eliminated from the diet. Alan Gaby, MD, reports in his Literature Review & Commentary column (February 2018): “Celiac disease-triggering gluten proteins are expressed at higher levels in modern wheat, whereas non-triggering proteins are expressed less.” He says that hybridization techniques have been used in the US since the 1950s to develop new strains of wheat that produce greater yields. Dr. Gaby says, “I have seen several patients with non-celiac gluten sensitivity who can tolerate wheat when traveling to various other countries but not when they are in the United States.”

The problem is that these new strains can have unexpected negative health effects—even though the sole goal was to increase yield. For example, in a 2017 mouse study, all animals fed modern wheat flour developed type 1 diabetes. In contrast, no animal given flour from traditional wheat strains grown in Israel developed diabetes.1

As if the hybridized wheat isn’t enough of a problem, US consumers also have to deal with additives. A recent article from The Guardian reports that bread in the US contains chemicals—such as potassium bromate, azodicarbonamide (ACA), and the preservatives BHA and BHT–that are banned in Brazil, China, and some European countries.2 All of these have been linked to cancer in laboratory experiments with animals. The US Food and Drug Administration considers these additives to be “generally recognized as safe.”

Between the hybridization, the chemicals, (and, of course, the pesticides used by big agriculture), I wonder if there is any benefit in eating bread. Yet, I still remember eating a bakery-fresh sourdough bread, decades ago, that actually settled a nervous stomach. My own attempts to make homemade bread have come out rather…flat.

But I sure would like to re-discover a bread that is truly the staff of life! 

Jule Klotter

References

  1. Gorelick J, et al. The Impact of Diet Wheat Source on the Onset of Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus—Lessons Learned from the Non-Obese Diabetic (NOD) Mouse Model. Nutrients. 2017;9:E482.
  2. Farah T. Banned bread: why does the US allow additives that Europe says is unsafe? The Guardian. May 28, 2019.