Ever wondered how the French can indulge in bread yet maintain their enviable 'joie de vivre'? Join me on a nutritional journey as we unravel the complex tapestry of bread's role in nutrition and health.
Reflecting on my own escapades through the charming streets of Paris, I tackle the contrasting views about this age-old staple. We'll sift through the nutritional science of bread, acknowledging its bountiful benefits—fiber, iron, B vitamins—and confront the potential drawbacks of indulging without restraint. With engaging anecdotes and careful analysis, this episode promises to equip you with the knowledge to enjoy bread in harmony with a balanced diet.
This bread-centric episode wouldn't be complete without the esteemed input of nutritional experts. They'll guide us through the labyrinth of loaf choices, extolling the virtues of whole grain, sprouted grain, and sourdough breads. Each slice comes with its own set of health boons, from high fiber to a lower glycemic index, ideal for maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Moreover, you'll get a peek into my personal pantry, discovering the brands and types I swear by, along with tips for those who may find bread a bit harder to digest. We knead to know what we're eating, so let's learn together how to select the best bread for our bodies without compromising on taste.
Find episode links, notes and artwork at:
https://blog.dirobi.com
This show is for informational purposes only.
None of the information in this podcast should be construed as dispensing medical advice.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
Ever wondered how the French can indulge in bread yet maintain their enviable 'joie de vivre'? Join me on a nutritional journey as we unravel the complex tapestry of bread's role in nutrition and health.
Reflecting on my own escapades through the charming streets of Paris, I tackle the contrasting views about this age-old staple. We'll sift through the nutritional science of bread, acknowledging its bountiful benefits—fiber, iron, B vitamins—and confront the potential drawbacks of indulging without restraint. With engaging anecdotes and careful analysis, this episode promises to equip you with the knowledge to enjoy bread in harmony with a balanced diet.
This bread-centric episode wouldn't be complete without the esteemed input of nutritional experts. They'll guide us through the labyrinth of loaf choices, extolling the virtues of whole grain, sprouted grain, and sourdough breads. Each slice comes with its own set of health boons, from high fiber to a lower glycemic index, ideal for maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Moreover, you'll get a peek into my personal pantry, discovering the brands and types I swear by, along with tips for those who may find bread a bit harder to digest. We knead to know what we're eating, so let's learn together how to select the best bread for our bodies without compromising on taste.
Find episode links, notes and artwork at:
https://blog.dirobi.com
This show is for informational purposes only.
None of the information in this podcast should be construed as dispensing medical advice.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
Hello, dear listener, welcome to the DiRobi Health Show, the number five best health show according to feedspotcom. I'm pretty excited about that. Maybe they're a really tiny organization that doesn't have much time for research, I don't know, but I think it's pretty cool that we're number five and, by the way, we're often in the top 10 in Fiji. So another major accomplishment for our tiny little show. Hi, mom, thanks for listening. Friends and family.
Speaker 1:Today we're going to talk about bread. Keto Dude says bread is the devil. First it will give you a muffin top, then it will kill you. The French listen to this and laugh as only the French can do when laughing at people from other countries. And, of course, the French are healthier than Americans and they pretty much live on bread.
Speaker 1:I'll never remember going. I'll never remember. I won't forget going to Paris trip of a lifetime with our family. We had an Airbnb near downtown Luckily it was before Notre Dame had burned and it was a fantastic trip. And everywhere we went there was bread. Every cafe, I mean the bakeries, were full of delicious bread products. All of the bread tasted fantastic. Of course, the baguettes were everywhere. I remember one time walking from our Airbnb to the metro to go sightseeing and seeing a young French man maybe 20 years old, slim, fit, looked like an athlete sitting on the sides of the metro steps with one item of food a fresh, warm baguette and I don't know why that caught my attention so much. It's a pretty common sight in France, I believe, and we certainly saw it quite a bit. No butter, just in the slim brown paper bag, and he just looked like he was in heaven as he ate this warm baguette from a local bakery.
Speaker 1:And of course, there are people now in America who are talking about bread and carbs generally as if they are some type of a curse. However, are they? Is there nuance? What are the best types? What about calories? How much is too much, etc. In this episode I'm going to go through these aspects of bread and whether you can eat bread or whether you have to banish it forever.
Speaker 1:Now, bread has been considered a staple of nutrition for thousands of years. Just estimate that about 10,000 years ago we had the agricultural revolution from hunter-gatherer situation into a farming situation and we, you know, it's reasonable to assume that shortly after that, those farmers figured out how to do stuff with what they were growing, including making bread. So whether bread goes back 10,000 years or not, I don't know, but it's a long time, however you slice it. And bread, of course, can be healthy when chosen wisely and consumed in moderation. It has essential nutrients, including dietary fiber, iron and B vitamins. Whole grain breads, in particular, offer health benefits. Another one, of course, is fiber. We are a fiber depleted society, and the right type of breads can help us get enough fiber in our diets. Also, fiber helps you keep feeling full for longer. This is why I do not like these white breads that have been stripped of all the fiber and they not only give you empty calories, but they don't even give you the satiation, the feeling of being full, whereas whole grains do.
Speaker 1:Now, a major goal of health conscious people is to prioritize whole proteins in their diets. Yet bread itself isn't necessarily the enemy. The problem is that bread is often smothered in jams, butter, honey, etc. And eaten up without the corresponding protein necessary to create a balanced, healthy meal. So bread itself isn't necessarily the problem, but high carb, low protein diets definitely are a problem there's no doubt about that and so bread, inadvertently, can become a part of the problem. So breads, for example, are often added to meals that already had a large enough portion of carbs. Imagine, for example, a traditional roast beef meal which often comes with healthy veggies and a potato or two, and that is enough carbs in one meal. However, we often add a roll. That roll might have as much as 240 calories. In this case, the bread itself isn't necessarily bad. Imagine that the roll is the healthiest roll ever. It's still adding 240 calories that we just don't need, not including butter, jam, honey or other things you may have put on the roll. So this is where bread becomes a concern.
Speaker 1:Here's some calorie count. Calorie counts of various breads, biscuits and gravy I'm thinking. Cracker barrel here 700 calories. A croissant medium size 300 to 400 calories. A bagel 195 baguette 86. Back to my French story. Notice that 86 calories is quite a bit lower than some of these others that we'll talk about.
Speaker 1:Banana bread 111. Brand muffin 180 calories. Bread with seeds 120 calories. Brown bread 123 calories. A small pancake 86. And who has just one? Right Again, go back to your last meal at a restaurant that served a breakfast with pancakes and did you have a couple of massive pancakes that might have added up to 500 calories, or that? That's typically the way they come then topped with butter and a bunch of syrup, you get the idea. A hot dog bun 211 calories all by itself, before you even eat that low quality meat. Okay, so that's enough examples.
Speaker 1:By the way, on blogdirobicom we have an episode or a blog post sorry called on the health benefits of bread. That has all these details and links and sources if you want to dig deeper into the science and study that we did for this episode. So for people who are being mindful of what they eat and trying to have the right amount of carbs, protein and fat with every meal, bread becomes a problem because it is often added on to otherwise healthy meal, creating a caloric surplus, just too much calories. And it wasn't that the bread was. The problem is that we already had enough carbs and too many people don't even have enough protein in their average meal. We should be getting a high quality portion of protein with every single meal and instead what we're doing way too often is massive portions of carbs, including bread, and not enough protein. But if you are eating a balanced meal that consists of a healthy portion of protein, a little bit of healthy fat and one portion of healthy carbs, think you know. One muffin, two slices of toast, for example, these would be healthy serving sizes of breads. Now, once we kind of make sure that the bread isn't just adding additional calories to an otherwise healthy meal, we then want to explore what's the best type of bread to eat.
Speaker 1:Well, I've chosen three. There's no magical rule here. I'm not saying that there's no other type of bread that isn't healthy. However, generally speaking, these are three that you can count on. Number one is whole grain bread. These are the breads with whole grains and no chemicals. These are the types that you get from your local baker, rarely from the big box store, although you can just be an ingredient reader, whole grain bread is made from the whole grain, meaning all parts of the grain the bran, the germ and the endosperm are all used. This is bread that's high in fiber, vitamins and minerals. Next is sprouted grain bread. When I say next, I don't mean next, as if whole grain bread was better. Sprouted grain is probably at the top of the healthy chart here between these three. Sprouted grain bread is made from whole grains that have been allowed to sprout. Now, in the hippie community they would say that this is really fantastic, because all plants, all vegetables, protect themselves with layers or shells or skins that are designed to repel mammals or other animals from eating them. They have their own protectiveness built in.
Speaker 1:Some people think that this is highly powerful poisons that can really hurt people, and other people not so much. They think it's more like there's arsenic in an apple, which there is. However, it is so low it can't possibly do you any harm. And arsenic, although we think of it as a poison, it's actually on the periodic table of elements. It is something that our bodies have a certain amount of at all times. But if you concentrate it and need it, it can kill you. But when you eat an apple, it doesn't kill you. And just as the scientists tell us that the poison is in the dose, this is true with these protective elements that grains have, as well as the arsenic in an apple. Hope that makes sense.
Speaker 1:I'm not sure if I explained it very clearly, but all I'm saying is that when you sprout the bread, when you sprout the grain I'm sorry the theory is that those protective mechanisms of the grain goes away and the phytonutrients are embellished. They become stronger, there's more of them. So that's probably the case. Grain does increase the bioavailability of nutrients, decreases the presence of anti-nutrients which can interfere with the absorption of minerals in your body. The anti-nutrients in bread aren't a great concern for most people, but if you're a vegan or vegetarian, you ought to learn more about them and probably only eat sprouted bread.
Speaker 1:And the next one is one of my favorites. It's sourdough bread. Sourdough bread is made through a fermentation process. Now, almost all of us should eat more fermented food. You typically don't eat enough kimchi, sauerkraut, kombucha, et cetera and sourdough bread is a fantastic way to get fermented food in your diet. Fermentation breaks down gluten. For those people that are gluten intolerant, they may do better on a sourdough bread. It also has a low glycemic index I'm sorry, lower glycemic index than many other types of bread, meaning it won't spike your blood sugar as much. However, do be a label reader, as with all these breads, as you still want to watch the calories and make sure that the company that is making these breads isn't pumping them full of chemicals. And obviously you know there's marketing on the outside of many of the products that we buy, including bread. So don't believe the marketing hype on the outside of the bread. Instead, be a label reader.
Speaker 1:If bread does cause you digestive comfort, you may be. I'm sorry, digestive comfort. If bread causes you digestive discomfort, you may be lacking enzymes and for that, try or eat anything RX. I have been surprised since we developed that product, how many people specifically mentioned bread as something they can now eat that they couldn't eat before. It's a trigger food for many people. Here's an example Denise Herbert.
Speaker 1:This is a review at darbycom. She says eat anything. Rx allows me to eat. I have fructose malabsorption, which simply means I can't eat fructose, only fruit or, sorry, any fruit, most vegetables, and forget about desserts. I also have fructin intolerance, which means no onions, celery, garlic or wheat, so no bread. Tough to have a sandwich without bread or eggs without toast. This enzyme allows me to eat more of these foods. I can now have toast with my eggs and some veggies at dinner. So we've had quite a few of these on the eat anything product. So if you like bread but you don't like what it does to your stomach, this is a fantastic solution. And, of course, use the discount code podcast to save 10% on that or anything else at the store as a listener of the show. So sourdough and sprouted grain breads are two really, really good choices.
Speaker 1:Now, like any food, healthy or not, bread should be eaten in moderation as part of a balanced diet. I alluded to this earlier. Overconsumption is the problem in most cases. Having an otherwise healthy breakfast but then adding additional breads is what is adding additional calories that aren't doing us any good. Just a couple of hundred extra calories over the course of a year means we gained a few pounds. Do that for 20 years and you are 40 pounds overweight at the age of 40. Something we talk about a lot here on the show. Avoiding a couple of hundred extra calories per day really does matter.
Speaker 1:Here's my personal guidelines for bread consumption. I try to eat a maximum of two slices a day. My favorite types of bread are Dave's killer bread, which I really enjoy, especially toasted. You can find it at Costco or most big box grocery stores. I also like sourdough, and so does my wife. She eats almost nothing but sourdough, so it's great she loves it. She always makes sure we have both types. She does the shopping in our home. She makes sure we have both types in our freezer at all times. I prefer both of them toasted.
Speaker 1:I have an almost zero tolerance policy for rolls, white bread, croutons. I literally take the croutons off a salad Again. It's just empty extra calories that I don't need. Are they delicious? Yes, but can I do without them? Absolutely, I take them all out, literally. So chances are that meal already had enough carbs and so we just want to avoid adding extras. In other words, if I have bread, I'm going to include it as the caloric carb with that meal.
Speaker 1:Eggs and toast with salsa, for example, is a great balanced breakfast. The eggs have your protein and a little bit of healthy fat, the toast is your carb portion and now the salsa adds veggies. It's hard to get veggies with breakfast, but if I smother my eggs with salsa or guacamole, I now have a great combo breakfast A tuna sandwich with a salad on the side. Another great example you get some fat and protein in the tuna. You get the carbs from the two pieces of bread and then add a salad or some side of vegetables and voila, you have a fantastic balanced meal. So consider limiting bread consumption to two portions a day.
Speaker 1:Cut out empty carbs and extra breads that you just don't need. Observe your plate, the size of portions, what's on your plate, and when they ask do you want to roll with that, do you want the garlic bread? Well, you can say yes if you don't also eat the two potatoes. Again, just come understand how many carbs you need with each meal. I'm telling you. If you can increase your mindfulness about protein and decrease how many carbs you eat along with that protein, it could make a major change in your own personal health and then avoid all the junk breads, white bread rolls, biscuits, all this stuff that's just loaded with sugars and preservatives and is just working on that muffin top. While being delicious, it is just something that overall, over the long term, is depleting our health, not adding to it.
Speaker 1:So a well-made, healthy bread is an excellent source of complex carbs, which will help you stay full and feel good and give you the fiber that you need and the energy that you need. Additionally, a good, healthy bread is also a good source of prebiotics, which promote gut health by feeding beneficial bacteria. It's been demonized in some dietary circles, and for good reason, because some of these things I've said. However, you can eat bread when you choose the bread wisely and eat it in moderation. I hope you enjoyed this episode. As I mentioned, you can buy products at dirobeatcom with the podcast code. Well, with the code podcast, and that will save you 10% on Eat Anything. Rx, a fantastic enzyme that helps people digest many different types of foods or anything else that we have there on the store. Thanks again for listening and making this show semi-popular on the Interwebs. This is Dave Sherwin, wishing you health and success.