While the topic of bread being a health food brings up conversation, bread has undeniably been a staple of human life for thousands of years. From feast to famine, bread was there to keep humans fed. Whether you believe bread is the reason for your bloat, or a staple of your healthy diet, most everyone knows that if you’re going to eat bread, whole grain is the healthiest way to go.
Unfortunately, only after trial and error did we find that eating the whole grain were the healthiest way to eat breads.
White Bread was a status symbol
Before industrialization, bread was made by hand grinding grains with rocks, producing a course whole grain bread. The rich created slave powered mills which refined the process, and made a flour that was much smoother and whiter than what the lower class was eating. Only the rich would have the status symbol around who had the cleanest, whitest, and fluffiest bread.
That is, before industrialization. After industrialized production of bread, bread became easier to make and cheaper to produce. This meant that the lowest classes would now be able to afford the bread that once only the rich would indulge. Producing mass quantities of bread that needed to be transported over longer distances called for a longer shelf life.
Whole Grains have three layers
Whole grains are composed of three layers, Bran, Endosperm, and germ. And each layer has it’s nutritional aspects. When grinding the grains, certain components of the grain were removed to create the ideal fluffy bread. The outermost bran layer contains B vitamins and fiber, which makes a flour darker in color…Bread makers wanted white bread, so that meant the bran was taken out. There’s the endosperm middle layer, which is white and starchy. White and fluffy bread was key, so endosperm was kept. Finally there’s the innermost germ layer, which contains healthy fats that rancify easily and make the bread taste bad. Therefore, germ was also taken out of the grain in order to preserve shelf life.
What’s left of this idealized grain is a starchy layer that has refined and stripped of most of it’s nutrients. Nutrients that people before 1900 did not know were needed for basic metabolism…
Whole Grains have B vitamins
When changing a person’s diet from a relatively nutrient packed bread, to a starchy nutrient-less bread, some nutritional deficiencies are bound to occur. During the 1900’s doctors were busy identifying causes for diseases, and were identifying vital compounds within foods that were “curing” these diseases. In reality, what doctors were identifying were vitamins, and the diseases they were curing were originally caused by a vitamin deficiency.
After identifying that whole grains contain B vitamins, and that refining grains removed these vitamins, scientists and industry knew the fix to their nutrition deficiency problem was simple, stop taking out vitamins from the grain. Simple fix was easier said than done. For unfortunately, the public didn’t want whole grain bread- they wanted the white bread that they have grown to love. This caused a dilemma for industries; how do they continue making bread the way people want it, but also ensure that the public is not having vitamin deficiencies from their product?
Thankfully, scientists set out to replicate man-made vitamins that were then to be added back into bread during production, “enriching” the bread. The addition of B vitamins to the bread supply decreased incidence of vitamin B deficiencies, and is still used to this day!
Wilder RM. A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ENRICHMENT OF FLOUR AND BREAD. JAMA. 1956;162(17):1539–1541. doi:10.1001/jama.1956.72970340006010
Other Sources:
https://www.kitchenproject.com/history/bread.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiamine_deficiency
https://www.choosemyplate.gov/grains
