What you need to know about Bread and How it can affect your Weight Loss

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 at 2:00 pm

By Dr. Judy Siegel
Nutrition Counseling Avon, Connecticut

Bread, one of our earliest foods-present at every meal. We love it!

So, what is it really? Flour, water, yeast and salt. Different flours, harder or softer, different rising temperatures, kneading procedures, baking times, shapes give us almost unlimited variation on this wonderful food. Every culture uses a grain to make ‘bread” of some type.

Sometimes, however, we use too much of a good food. Or, we find the poorest quality (cheapest). White bread, the spongy kind of my childhood was wonderful, I thought. Now it seems without character or nutritional value. All the vitamins were removed, then, by law, four are put back-B1, B2, B? and B6. Most of the fiber went too. Better for us, a 100% whole wheat bread, around 90 kcal a slice. Arnold’s, Pepperidge Farm, Entemann’s all make it, as do the local bakeries.

To qualify as whole wheat the label must say 100% whole wheat. If the label reads Mixed Grain bread, 7 Grain bread, Oatmeal bread, etc. look at the ingredients list. The first ingredient will be a whole grain, but the second will likely be enriched wheat flour-meaning white flour. Wheat bread is white flour bread. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, check the calories! I looked at three very healthy sounding breads and the calorie count was 130 per slice.

You get the most nutrition out of that 100% whole wheat, 90 calorie bread. BUT, if you are trying to lose weight or are diabetic, check the Total Carbohydrate on the Nutrition Label. There will be 16 grams or more per slice. To translate the grams into teaspoons (which we can understand) divide the Total Carbohydrate by 4. This means that this nutritious slice of 100% whole wheat bread has 4 teaspoons of sugar in it. If you need two slices to make a sandwich, that’s 8 teaspoons of sugar.

Just something for you to think about!