Whole Grain Bread & Pasta

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Whole Grain Bread & Pasta

26 Nov 2020

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What type of bread is most healthful? The Whole Grain Hierarchy article by Brenda Davis explains:

Bread is a very popular food around the world. Unfortunately, it is generally flour based and is light and fluffy, hence has a big impact on blood sugar. The good news is that not all breads are equal, and some can be quite healthy.

Sprouted breads (bread made from sprouted grains and dehydrated or cooked at a low temperature) such as manna breads are an excellent choice. Breads made from sprouted grain flours are preferable to regular flour breads but still can be quite light and fluffy.

Dense, European-Style Breads: Generally, the denser the bread, the more slowly it is absorbed, and the more healthful it is. Breads containing intact grains, nuts and seeds are better choices. Very heavy breads (e.g. breads you can practically stand on) are best.

In her video Whole Grain Hierarchy (12 mins, 2015), she explains:

[Flours] Ground whole grains is really another word for 'flour'. So something like an organic whole wheat flour or buckwheat flour or rye flour. These are made from intact whole grains but they are ground into a powder so that they are very quickly absorbed into the blood stream and we use these flour to make all sorts of things, whether it's bread or muffins or cookies or cakes. And so depending on what we add to ground grain, that will affect the quality of the whole grain product.

When we talk about intact whole grains, we talk about nothing added and nothing taken away. But there is always something added when we use flour. So you need to think about what's been added.

Are sprouted breads okay? Yes:

[Sprouted grain bread] The other thing to think about is if you enjoy bread, for example, when you buy bread like this bread (made from a sprouted grain), so the grain has been sprouted and then made into a flour, this is going to have more nutritional value than an unsprouted grain bread.

Are light, fluffy breads okay? No:

[Light, fluffy bread] The lighter and fluffer the bread, the more quickly it's absorbed. It's quite shocking. If you think about this: sugar has a glycemic index of about 68. Whole wheat bread has a glycemic index of about 70. White bread is maybe 72 or 74. This comes as quite a shock to people but one of the things that the rate at which we absorb our food is the lightness and the fluffiness of that food. So bread which is yeasted and which quite light and fluffy will be absorbed quite quickly.

Are European-style hard breads okay? Yes:

[European-style hard bread] The very best bread that you could eat would be a bread like this one [a European-style hard bread] that you could pretty much stand on. This bread is full of intact grains mixed in with the flour. You can see bits of nuts and seeds. The glycemic index of a bread like this one will be under 50. So this is really a good choice for bread. You can use it in any way that you would use a regular bread.

Is Whole Grain Pasta Okay?

Yes! In her video Whole Grain Hierarchy (12 mins, 2015), she explains:

[Pasta] And also of course we have things like pasta and it's really interesting. This is a quinoa pasta. This is whole wheat lasagna noodles. So this is a whole wheat pasta. And what's really interesting about pasta is pasta — like bread — is made from flour but itt's very very dense. And so it takes our body a lot longer to break pasta down. It has much lower impact on our blood sugar than a similar amount of bread. So that's one of the nice things about pasta: it has a very low glycemic index.

Sprouted Grain Breads

Which breads are made from sprouted grains?

Ezekiel 4:9 Breads are made from sprouted grains and lentils. The Low Sodium Ezekiel 4:9 has zero added salt! Its ingredient list:

Ingredients: Organic Sprouted Wheat, Filtered Water, Organic Sprouted Barley, Organic Sprouted Millet, Organic Malted Barley, Organic Sprouted Lentils, Organic Sprouted Soybeans, Organic Sprouted Spelt, Fresh Yeast, Organic Wheat Gluten.
Ezekiel 4:9 breads are inspired from the Biblical verse. According to New International Version:

"Take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt; put them in a storage jar and use them to make bread for yourself."
Manna Sprouted Bread Multigrain has these ingredients:

Ingredients: Sprouted organic wheat kernels, filtered water, organic brown rice, organic barley, organic millet, organic flax seeds, organic rye kernels, organic soy beans, organic rolled oats, organic oat bran, organic cornmeal.

European-Style Hard Breads

What are some examples of European-style hard bread? Mestemacher breads are found in many stores in USA. They have options like these:

Natural Fitness Bread: Ingredients are grain [whole rye meal (38 %), oats (12 %), whole rye flour (6 %)], water, iodised salt (salt, potassium iodate), wheat germs (1 %), oat fibre, yeast.
Natural Three Grain Bread: Ingredients are grain [whole rye meal (37 %), whole rye flour (8 %)], barley flakes (5 %), oat flakes (5 %), water, linseed, iodised salt (salt, potassium iodate), oat fibre, sesame, yeast.
Natural Sunflower Seed Bread: Ingredients are grain [whole rye meal, whole rye flour), water, sunflower seeds (5 %), iodised salt (salt, potassium iodate), oat fibre, yeast.

Dr Klaper

(4 mins) Eating Bread — Does Bread Fit Into Your Healthy Diet?

YouTube video description:

Dr Klaper offers his recommendations on healthy eating practices when it comes to eating bread. He tells us that eating sprouted whole grain bread (ezekiel bread) or at least whole wheat bread is better than white bread. Bread health is hotly debated by many health care professionals offering health advice. Moderation is the best course of action when it comes to adding bread to your plant based diet and healthy eating. If you are gluten intolerant and have celiac disease you should avoid eating bread entirely.

Dr McDougall

In the article For the Love of Grains (McDougall Newsletter, Vol 7, No 1), Dr McDougall explains that intact whole grains are best and that we must avoid flours (even whole grain flours):

"I am often asked if there is any harm in using a home-bread-machine to make bread — after all, nothing is added or removed in the processing. For most people whole grain breads are an excellent choice, but it is not the same as eating whole grains. Beating the whole grain more than 1000 times with the whirling steel blade of the bread machine converts the kernel into a powder, known as flour. The intact cell wall of the kernel has been destroyed and now the digestive enzymes (amylase) easily digest the inner nutrients. In addition, the flour has a much larger surface area to volume ratio than did the whole grain, making digestion and absorption much more rapid. For you this physical change may translate into easier weight gain, and higher blood levels of glucose, triglycerides, and cholesterol. The amount of insulin released by the pancreas into the blood is also increased as grains are processed from whole grains to cracked grains to coarse flour to fine flour.[23] More insulin can mean more weight gain, and maybe, more risk of diabetes and heart disease. However, compared to animal-foods, free-oils, and plant-parts processed beyond recognition, whole wheat bread is definitely health food."

At the same time, the section Desserts & Baked Goods at Dr McDougall's website showcases these recipes:

Seven Grain Bread (with whole wheat flour, 5- or 7-grain cereal mix) — Banana Nut Bread (with pastry flour, white flour) — Zucchini Bread (with rolled oats, dry millet) — Roasted Garlic Bread (baguette with garlic and vegetable broth) — Nelson's Rye Bread (with cracked rye meal, wheat flour) — Cornbread (I) (with cornmeal, all-purpose flour) — Cornbread (II) (with cornmeal, whole wheat pastry flour, unbleached white flour).

What's going on? How come Dr McDougall explains that we must avoid flours and breads in an article but also showcases bread recipes at his website? Maybe this passage from this article (2011) explains:

White vs Brown Rice and Brown Bread

Switching to unrefined foods, like brown rice, is impractical for many people because these choices are less available and sometimes costlier. In the past eating refined foods has defined social class. Traditionally in Asian countries, wealthier people could afafford white rice, but the poor people had to eat the less expensive brown rice. Many of my Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino patients have refused to eat brown rice because of bigotry. My solution has been a trade-off: Stick with your favorite white rice, but eliminate the most damaging culprits: meats, dairy products, and oils.

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