09/09/2024
What's in your bread?
Historically bread was made with flour, water, and salt.
Most breads sold in stores today are ultra-processed with some of the following ingredients: salt, sugar, fats, and oils, a cocktail of chemicals, dough conditioners, ascorbic acid, bleach and more. Somehow today's bread is a lot less nutritious then it once was. What kind of impact does that have on our bodies.
Sourdough bread is the kind of bread that has been made for centuries. The industrialization of bread production, dating back to the 1880's, resulted in mechanically milled flour. They started by removing the bran and germ of the flour which contained so many nutrients such as proteins, oils, omega 3s, all of that good stuff which made it unruly to bake. This was to stabilize the flour to make it easier for industries to mass produce bread by adding different kind of chemicals and ingredients to make their product shelf stable, continuously fluffy and pleasing to the palate at all times. The focus of this billion dollar industry is on profits and not their consumer's health.
Aside from flour, water, sugar, and yeast what are some of the other ingredients of this ultra-processed bread?
Tartaric Acid:
An emulsifier to stop other ingredients from separating. Gut health experts worry that the combination of water and oil that is used to make tartaric acid may wear down the gut lining in a way that makes you susceptible to digestive issues and disease.
Corn Syrup:
A sweetener used to mask the more chemical flavors in ultra-process breads. It is a high fructose type of sugar that makes the liver work harder to break it down putting you at risk for fatty liver disease, diabetes, inflammation, heart disease, and obesity.
Acetic Acid:
An antimicrobial used to prevent mold from growing and to prevent the bread from going stale quicker. It is a chemical used to make bread last way longer then it should.
Calcium Carbonate:
Dough conditioner used to improve texture and shelf life. The issue is it makes something inherently unhealthy quite enticing causing you to want more.
Molasses:
A sweetener that can spike your blood sugar and drives people to eat more of it.
Ascorbic Acid:
Used as a flour treatment to fortify the dough against an "aggressive" unnatural manufacturing processes.
L-cysteine Hydrochloride:
Common preservative derived from duck feathers or human hair. It is an amino acid used to prolong shelf life and enhance the flavor of processed foods. GROSS.
Bleach:
Added to make the bread look whiter. Chlorine dioxide is usually added to the flour.
Azodicarbonamide:
Used as a bleach and foam expander to give bread a fluffier feel. Also used in vinyl flooring and yoga mats to give it a squishy feel. This product is banned in the EU, Australia, and other countries as this product can be cancerous.
Calcium Propionate:
A preservative used for volume, fluffiness, and shelf stability.
Monoglycerides:
Made from soy beans and other oils to give the bread that fluffiness and last longer.
These are only a few of the micro ingredients found in today's ultra-processed breads. This is why we decided to return to the old ways of making sourdough bread with simple ingredients using stone ground organic flours, water, salt, and flaxseed meal.
So, What is in your bread?
