What's wrong with bread?

Let's take a look at the bread-making process. The miller takes the living grain of wheat and removes the outer shell called the bran (fiber) and either throws it away or sells it to health food stores. Then he removes the wheat germ (which contains all the nutrients) because it gums up his machinery and again sells it to health food stores. Then he takes what is left called the endosperm and grinds it into a fine powder. But this powder is not white so he bleaches it, often using a bleaching agent similar to Clorox.

Now the flour is ready for the ingredients (poisons like sugar, salt, dough conditioners and preservatives) and baking... but it contains zero fiber and zero nutrients. Knowing the majority of the public will not buy a product that does not have at least some nutritive value posted on the wrapper, the bread-maker puts into this dead, fiberless, nutritionally-void substance, some artificial, coal-tar derived vitamins and minerals which have been known to cause cancer. Now he can label it "enriched" and pass it on to the unsuspecting public as something that is supposed to be good food.

White flour is used in schools to make paste, which is just what it does in our digestive tract, causing constipation.

Then there are those who realize the miller has taken all the goodness out of the flour so they mill their own flour from organic wheat and other organic grains, believing they are leaving in the good part. They don't realize when they bake the bread the heat destroys almost all of the nutrients.

Chromium helps escort glucose to the cells. 80% of Americans are chromium deficient. It's a trace mineral in wheat, but 72% of it is missing in white flour.

Another problem with bread is yeast. Almost every food that is fermented (like wine) or is moldy contains yeast and contributes to yeast growth. Yeasts can live in the body. Yeasts live off of sugar and starch. Do you know what you get when you eat fruit or fruit and grains together combined with a yeast build up in person's body which cooks them at 98.6 degrees? You get alcohol. A person's body can become a very large and efficient "still". This can cause health problems of many kinds including headaches, stomachaches, indigestion, poor digestion or no digestion at all.

When you take a diet high in refined carbohydrates, yeast germs (Candida Albicons) proliferate. Increased numbers of yeast germs put out toxins which depress the immune system and increase your susceptibility to food and chemical allergies, infections and other illnesses.

Other things that can contribute to this are beer, pizza, cheese, (especially moldy cheeses) sweet drinks, sweet foods and sugar in almost everything that is processed including breakfast cereals.

The best way to stop this, besides the dietary changes is to eat garlic, yogurt (with live cultures only), linseed oil and a diet high in beta carotene and vitamin C.

This article is published as a service of Real Foods.

© 1998 Real Foods, Inc. All Rights Reserved