Articles

Articles

On this page, we talk about modern food production. Here we hope to give you a bit more information on what is in our food and why we should be wary of others who try to sell us a lifestyle based around eating as a process rather than a pleasure.
We begin by discussing the most important part of the bread making process – turning the raw grain into flour, a process we never see but should question at length simply because of how this process has changed over the years and yes – for the worst.

Modern Bread

THE BROKEN STAFF OF LIFE, OR WHY WE SHOULD QUESTION WHAT OTHERS ARE GIVING US
Modern technology has transformed bread, once the staff of life, into a mere broken reed, contributing to widespread vitamin and mineral deficiencies. This has occurred in Western industrialized countries where few people go hungry? Bread is used here as just one example of similar processes that degrades our food supply on its way from the farm to the consumer.

To get the conveniences of high-tech food processing, mass-production, mass-marketing, long shelf life, uniformity of final product, even coloration, and soft texture, we create nutritional deficiencies. The food processing industry deceptively markets its products as more convenient versions of what grandmother once did in her kitchen. That is far from the truth!

Most of today’s mass-produced foods are seriously depleted of nutrients and are highly chemicalised with additives. Processed foods today are not just more sophisticated and more convenient versions of the foods eaten by our ancestors. A wide spectrum of essential nutrients has been removed in the manufacturing process. The basic molecular structure of what remains is also degraded and nutritionally inferior.
Until recently, grains were ground between large stones to make flour. Everything in the original grain remained in the finished product, including the germ, the fiber, the starch, and a wide spectrum of vitamins and minerals. The final product contained all the naturally occurring vitamins, minerals and micronutrients.

In the absence of refrigeration, stone-ground flour spoils quickly. After wheat has been ground, natural wheat-germ oil becomes rancid at about the same rate that milk becomes sour. Whole-wheat flour and bread should therefore be stored in a cool place, preferably in a refrigerator.

Hippocrates, a physician in ancient Greece, once recommended stone-ground flour, complete with its vitamins, minerals, natural bran and dietary fiber, for beneficial effects on the digestive tract. Today, three-fourths of that dietary fiber is removed from commercial flour. Partially as a result, constipation is very common.

During the industrial revolution in the nineteenth century, assembly-line techniques for mass-producing flour and bread were developed. Grinding stones were not fast enough for mass-production. High-speed, steel roller mills were invented, to produce flour very rapidly. Grain mills thus earned higher profits. High-speed mills do not grind the germ and the bran properly and it is ejected. Much of the original grain, including the most nutritious portion, is taken out and sold as “byproducts” for animals. Animals are often better nourished than people are. It’s been cynically observed that more profit can be made from healthy animals and sick people.
High-speed mills run very hot, at 400 degrees Fahrenheit, just under the temperature that will burn and discolor the flour. That high heat destroys many vitamins. (While baking, the interior of bread does not get much hotter than 170 degrees, which is much less harmful to vitamins.) Since the late nineteenth century, white bread, biscuits and cakes made from white flour and sugar have become mainstays in the diets of industrialized nations. That diet is much less nutritious than in former times and new types of disease have become common. Tooth decay, once rare, is now epidemic. The incidence of tooth decay correlates perfectly throughout the world with industrialization and the use of refined foods–especially white flour and sugar.

Most bread is now manufactured in large factories capable of producing up to a quarter million loaves per day. This mass-produced bread is soft, gooey, devitalized, and nutritionally deficient–laced with chemical additives. Public taste is accustomed to such bread. People have forgotten how real bread tastes. Chemical preservatives allow bread to be shipped long distances and to remain on the shelf for many days without spoiling and without refrigeration. Again, resulting in higher profits.

To make bread a brighter white, at the expense of consumer health, flour is treated with chemical bleach, similar to Clorox. The bleaching process leaves residues of toxic chlorinated hydrocarbons and dioxins. Methionine, an essential amino acid, reacts with bleaching chemicals to form methionine sulfoxine. That toxic residue causes nervousness and seizures in animals.
The bleaching process destroys many vitamins (those not already destroyed by the high heat of milling). Bleaching agents have therefore been banned for breadmaking in Germany since 1958. In the United States, however, no such ban exists and the bleached bread continues to be the mainstay. Most white flour used in super-market bread, rolls, cakes, pastries, spaghetti, noodles, pasta, and breakfast cereals, has been bleached.
Grain millers in the nineteenth century soon discovered that highly refined flour would keep without spoiling for prolonged periods, even before the days of chemical preservatives and refrigeration. It’s now clear refined flour is so depleted of essential vitamins and minerals that it will not support life. Even the insects and rodents cannot live on it! Can humans be expected to fare any better?
Experiments were reported in the British medical journal, The Lancet, showing that dogs fed exclusively on white bread died of malnutrition within two months. Dogs similarly fed only bread made with stone-ground, whole-wheat flour lived indefinitely in good health.
Chemicals continue to be added to super-market breads in large numbers, despite increasing reports that similar chemicals previously thought to be safe are potential causes of cancer. More than 30 different chemicals are approved by the Food and Drug Administration for addition to bread, including ethylated mono and triglycerides, potassium bromate, potassium iodide, calcium proprionate, benzoyl peroxide, tricalcium phosphate, calcium sulfate, ammonium chloride and magnesium carbonate. These are all routinely added to bread to extend shelf life, despite the fact that little is known about their long-term cumulative toxicity, when taken together. If you don’t already read labels, you’ll be shocked when you do.
When grain is made into refined white flour, more than 30 essential nutrients are largely removed. Only four of those nutrients are added back in a process called “enrichment.” Using this same logic, if a person were robbed of £30 and the thief then returned £4 to his victim for cab fare home, then that person should be considered “enriched” by £4 not robbed of £26. How would you feel in that situation? You should feel the same about “enriched” white flour and bread? Only vitamins B1, B2, B3, and iron are added back. Nutrients which are removed and not returned include 44% of the vitamin E, 52% of the pantothenic acid, 65% of the folic acid, 76% of the biotin, 84% of the vitamin B6, and half or more of 20 minerals and trace elements, including magnesium, calcium, zinc, chromium, manganese, selenium, vanadium, and copper. If consumers would just educate themselves in the principles of good nutrition and show an educated preference at the checkout counter, the food industry would be forced to respond with more nutritious products.
Iron, the single mineral added back to enriched white flour, is present in toxic amounts in the bodies of many older people. Iron contributes widely to premature atherosclerosis, heart attacks, strokes, arthritis, cancer and other age-related diseases. It is quite possible that enrichment of flour with iron has been poisoning the public for decades. Avoidance of unneeded iron supplementation is reason enough in itself not to buy so-called “enriched” flour products.
Deceptive marketing practices are widespread. Much of the bread now marketed as “whole-wheat bread” is the same old refined white bread with a little brown coloring added. That coloring is usually burnt sugar, listed on the label as caramel. One manufacturer even added sawdust to replace the lost bran, calling it cellulose on the label and advertising it as “high-fiber” bread. It is legal to describe inferior flour as “whole wheat” on the label, even when the bran and germ have been removed in high-speed roller mills.

It is slow and more expensive to mass-produce bread made with l00% stone-ground whole-wheat flour. Manufacturers go to great lengths to mislead the public by making inferior products appear of higher quality. Without chemical preservatives bread spoils rapidly. It quickly becomes stale, hard and moldy. To market nutritious whole-grain, unrefined bread over long distances would require refrigerator trucks for delivery and refrigerator storage in super-markets. Even under refrigeration, spoilage would be faster than with chemicalized bread. That would add greatly to expense. Profits would be smaller. Production of truly nutritious bread therefore falls to small local bakeries, which sell direct or deliver daily to nearby stores.
Scientific evidence implicates a low-fiber diet of refined flour as one cause of bowel cancer. Without bran, transit time through the digestive tract is greatly lengthened. Constipation results, causing hemorrhoids, diverticulitis and increased risk of colon and rectal cancer.

What is the solution to this problem? Ideally, one should buy wheat in sacks, grind the grain at home and quickly bake it into bread. An alternative would be to buy stone-ground whole-wheat flour at a natural food store, either ground at the time of purchase on the premises, refrigerate at once and use soon. Stone-ground flour will keep for several months frozen.
Unfortunately, most people no longer have time in their schedules for baking at home and must rely on store-bought products. To determine which bread is best, read the label thoroughly and choose a product that has the brown coloring of natural flour without any coloring agents added. Choose a product with a minimum of chemicals listed on the label. Whole-grain bread does not rise as much and therefore contains more wheat and less air. A good loaf will therefore be heavier to lift, firmer to squeeze and chewier. The flavor will be much better, however.
Slow-speed steel hammer-mills are often used instead of stones. That type of flour can be listed on the label as “stone-ground.” It is equivalent to stone-ground flour and is equally nutritious. Any process that renders the entire grain into usable flour, without exposing it to high heat is acceptable.

If a loaf made with such l00% stone-ground flour cannot be found, choose one with unbleached or “enriched” flour. “Gluten flour” is just another name for partially refined flour. Even so-called “unbleached whole-wheat flour” which is processed on high speed roller mills is missing many of the vitamins, bran, and germ.

If bread is made entirely with l00% stone-ground whole grains, it will state so on the label. If the label does not contain that statement, then you must assume otherwise. Many bakers add refined or so-called gluten flour to produce a lighter and more uniform product. Unbleached flour is better than bleached but is still inferior unless 100% stone-ground. Bakeries seldom state the exact percentage of whole-grain relative to refined or unbleached flour. In those instances, it is usually safe to assume that very little stone ground whole-grain flour is used.
A search through grocery stores and super-markets today will not reveal any mass-marketed bread that meets the criteria for good nutrition. However, many small bakeries exist that produce superior products for local sale, either direct or in natural food stores. Read the labels. Just because a product is sold in a health food store does not insure that it is of high quality.
Look for a loaf that states “only 100% stone-ground whole-wheat flour” on the label. Refrigerate it. Expect it to be heavier and chewier. Squeeze it. If your fingers go in easily and the bread springs back, it is not a nutritious loaf. If you don’t eat it within a day or two, freeze it until needed. Expect to pay more. Whole-grain bread does not rise as much and contains more wheat than the same size loaf of refined bread. You are paying for more grain, more time for production, and less air. You will be much better nourished as a result.

A final word of caution. People who suffer with chronic fatigue, immune dysfunction, food allergies, chemical sensitivities, environmental illness, or so-called Candida or yeast related illness are often sensitive to the gluten in whole grain wheat. Paradoxically, people with such chromic problems may feel worse when they improve their diets to include whole, unrefined grains. Whole grains contain more of everything and are thus more likely to aggravate allergies.  Because many of the nutrients in white flour are partially denatured or removed during the refining process, it is less allergic

Copyright © 2007 John A. Cranton, ARNP, all rights reserve

The shocking truth about bread

Flour, yeast, water and salt – a traditional loaf needs only four ingredients. So why are calcium propionate, amylase, chlorine dioxide and L-cysteine hydrochloride now crammed into our daily bread?

Back in the early 1960s, the national loaf was fundamentally redesigned. The flour and yeast were changed and a combination of intense energy and additives completely displaced time in the maturing of dough. Almost all our bread has been made this way for nearly half a century. It is white and light and stays soft for days. It is made largely with home-grown wheat and it is cheap. For increasing numbers of people, however, it is also inedible.

Now, as technology finds ever more ingenious ways to adulterate our bread, so science is revealing the havoc this may be causing to public health. As recent research suggests, we urgently need to rethink the way we make bread.

British industrial bread commands little respect. This isn’t surprising when it is promoted with such mixed messages. Some loaves, described as having ‘premium’ qualities, seem barely distinguishable from others being sold at less than the price of a postage stamp. ‘Healthy-eating’ brands, adorned with images of nature and vitality, make detailed claims about the virtues of this or that added nutrient. But the big bakers keep quiet about nutrition when pushing their ‘standard’ loaves, which still account for over half of the market and are sold on price alone.

You might think that keeping prices down would be a good way to increase sales. But with bread, low cost and low quality have become so intertwined that conventional economics are turned on their head. We produce some of the least expensive bread in Europe, but our bread consumption is also one of the lowest.

It will take more than clever branding or a little soya, linseed and omega-3 to dispel the prevailing image of British bread culture as one dominated by pap.

If that seems a harsh judgement, take a look at what actually goes into your daily bread.

In 1961 the British Baking Industries Research Association in Chorleywood, Hertfordshire, devised a bread-making method using lower-protein wheat, an assortment of additives and high-speed mixing. Over 80 per cent of all UK bread is now made using this method and most of the rest uses a process called ‘activated dough development’ (ADD), which involves a similar range of additives. So, apart from a tiny percentage of bread, this is what we eat today.

The Chorleywood Bread Process (CBP) produces bread of phenomenal volume and lightness, with great labour efficiency and at low apparent cost. It isn’t promoted by name. You won’t see it mentioned on any labels. But you can’t miss it. From the clammy sides of your chilled wedge sandwich to the flabby roll astride every franchised burger, the stuff is there, with a soft, squishy texture that lasts for many days until the preservatives can hold back the mould no longer. If bread forms a ball that sticks to the roof of your mouth as you chew, thank the Chorleywood Bread Process – but don’t dwell on what it will shortly be doing to your guts.

This is Britain’s bread: a technological marvel combining production efficiency with a compelling appeal to the lowest common denominator of taste. It is the very embodiment of the modern age.

Below is a breakdown of the additional ingredients – aside from flour, water, salt and yeast – in a typical CBP loaf. Bread made with just these four ingredients was the basis of most reputable independant bakers before the war. Even yeast (as an added ingredient) is unnecessary with natural leavens or sourdoughs. So it is reasonable to ask: are these ingredients necessary? And, if not, what are they doing in our bread?

Enzymes are modern baking’s big secret. A loophole classifies them as ‘processing aids’, which need not be declared on product labels. Additives, on the other hand, must be listed. Not surprisingly, most people have no idea that their bread contains added enzymes.

An enzyme is a protein that speeds up a metabolic reaction, and are extracted from plant, animal, fungal and bacterial sources. Chymosin, for example, is the enzyme used to curdle milk for cheese-making. It is either derived from rennet from a calf’s stomach or synthesised by genetic engineering.

A whole host of enzymes are used in baking. Their status as processing aids is based on the assumption that they are ‘used up’ in the production process and are therefore not really present in the final product. This is a deception that allows the food industry to manipulate what we eat without telling us. In their own trade literature, enzyme manufacturers extol the ‘thermostability’ of this or that product; in other words its ability to have a lasting effect on the baked bread.

Manufacturers have developed enzymes with two main objectives: to make dough hold more gas (making lighter bread) and to make bread stay softer for longer after baking. Many bakery enzymes are derived from substances that are not part of a normal human diet. Even if such enzymes are chemically the same as some of those naturally found in flour or bread dough, they are added in larger amounts than would ever be encountered in ordinary bread.

And now the safety of bakery enzymes has been radically challenged by the discovery that the enzyme transglutaminase, used to make dough stretchier in croissants and some breads, may turn part of the wheat protein toxic to people with a severe gluten intolerance. This development is important because it suggests that adding enzymes to bread dough may have unintended and damaging consequences. Surely no one can seriously suggest that bakery enzymes should be omitted from bread labels.

We should be suspicious of bakery enzymes for four additional reasons:

Enzymes can be allergens and should be identified on labels in the same way as the major allergen groups.

Failure to label enzymes prevents people from making informed choices about their diet.

There is a fundamental dishonesty in treating enzymes as though they had no effect on baked bread when this is patently why they are used.

Judgements about ingredients should take into account the whole food; an enzyme may be harmless in itself but may be used to make an undesirable product.

Modern baking is schizophrenic about time, on the one hand wanting to reduce it to nothing, on the other trying to extend it indefinitely. And it is also in two minds about its raw materials, torn between the desire to remove things that get in the way and the impulse to add things that will make the bread easier (for machine production), bigger, softer, cheaper, longer-lasting or more apparently healthy.

Baking technologists just can’t leave well alone. There’s always some functional advantage to be pursued, some marginal value to be prised from dumb nature, as if the human race had never quite mastered this business of bread.

We have evolved an industrial bread-making system that, in a variety of ways we can no longer ignore, produces bread that more and more people cannot and should not eat. Some would say that the pappy, bland nature of CBP bread is reason enough to consign it to the compost heap of food history. But these qualities are ultimately matters of personal preference. The use of additives, on the other hand, especially those whose provenance or purpose is not apparent to the consumer, raises serious questions of accountability and trust. Above all, the baking industry must respond to the growing body of research that is charting the profound unhealthiness of making bread quickly. From wheat to finished loaf, industrial baking needs to be reconstructed from first principles, of which the most important is a proper respect for time.

If you are dismayed at the covert corruption of our daily food, you may agree with me that bread matters too much to be left to the industrial bakers. More and more people are taking control over their lives and health by making their own bread – bread you can trust and believe in.

What’s in our bread

FAT
Hard fats improve loaf volume, crumb softness and help it to last longer. Hydrogenated fats have commonly been used, though large bakers are phasing them out, possibly replacing them with fractionated fats. These don’t contain or produce transfats, which have been associated with heart disease.

FLOUR TREATMENT AGENT
L-ascorbic acid (E300) can be added to flour by the miller, or at the baking stage. It acts as an oxidant, helping to retain gas in the dough, which makes the loaf rise more and gives a false impression of value. It is not permitted in wholemeal flour, but permitted in wholemeal bread.

BLEACH
Chlorine dioxide gas is used by millers and makes white flour whiter. It has some “improving” effect on the flour – bleaches have been used as a substitute for the natural ageing of flour.

REDUCING AGENT
Used as L-cysteine hydrochloride (E920), cysteine is a naturally occurring amino acid used in baking to create stretchier doughs, especially for burger buns and French sticks. It may be derived from animal hair and feathers.

SOYA FLOUR
Widely used in bread “improvers”, soya flour has a bleaching effect on flour, and assists the machinability of dough and the volume and softness of bread, enabling more water to be added to the dough.

EMULSIFIERS
Widely used in bread improvers to control the size of gas bubbles, emulsifiers enable the dough to hold more gas and therefore grow bigger and make the crumb softer. Emulsifiers also reduce the rate at which the bread goes stale.

PRESERVATIVES
Calcium propionate is widely used, as is vinegar (acetic acid). Preservatives are only necessary for prolonged shelf life – home freezing is a chemical-free alternative.

MONO AND DI GLYCERIDES OF FATTY ACIDS

Are trans fats or emulsifiers made from fatty acids. They are the basis for many synthetic emulsifiers. They are usually made with hardened Palm oils. The process involves heating the oil for up to 3 hours at high temperature and passing hydrogen gas through it in the presence of a metal catalyst.

ANTI OXIDANTS

For example BHA and BHT. Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) and the related compound butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) are phenolic compounds that are often added to foods to preserve fats. BHA is generally used to keep fats from becoming rancid. It is also used as a yeast de-foaming agent. BHA is found in butter, meats, cereals, chewing gum, baked goods, snack foods, dehydrated potatoes, and beer. It is also found in animal feed, food packaging, cosmetics, rubber products, and petroleum product

Copyright in part: Andrew Whitley from an article in the Independent