After I gave up sugar, bread was the next food that I realized I needed to work on changing. Refined white bread was making me feel sick and have acne just like sugar. As I read about it I realized that refined bread is digested much too quickly, and because of this it gives the same type of “sugar high” as plain sugar.
White bread is made by stripping all the nutrients and bran from the wheat grain, which leaves a very light flour that is a source of empty calories. Sometimes it’s even bleached in order to make it whiter.
Most of the time, synthetic vitamins and minerals are then added back into the flour. This is called enrichment. In my opinion, these manmade chemicals are not sufficient replacements for the natural vitamins and minerals that we need.
Unfortunately, even wheat breads are often enriched, and they sometimes even have white flour as one of the ingredients.
When I shop for bread at the Walmarts near my house, I have never once found a bread that I would consider healthy enough to eat. (Although Walmarts in other states sometimes carry healthy bread).
Because of this, I often have to buy bread at expensive healthfood stores or Kroger, but I’m constantly checking the bread at every store I visit.
When I shop for bread there are three main elements that I check. First, the automatic failure is any bread with added vitamins and minerals, or any ingredient labeled as “enriched.” This is a dead giveaway that the company doesn’t really care about providing a quality product, and if they are including enriched flour they’re probably also including sugar and other junk.
Next, I check the type of sweetener used in the bread, and how much there is. Most breads have a little sugar in them, and I will try to avoid it if I can, but if there’s just a tiny amount I sometimes have to settle for the best I can find.
Finally, I try to get sprouted bread whenever possible. Sprouting the grains before making bread makes it easier for your body to digest it and absorb all the available nutrients. It can be very difficult to find affordable sprouted bread though, so sometimes I have to settle for plain whole wheat bread.
Unfortunately, the only reasonably-priced sprouted bread I have found is at Trader Joe’s for $2.99 per load. Since I live about an hour from Trader Joe’s I usually wait for Kroger’s Ezekiel bread to go on sale and buy it for $4.99 (originally $5.99!).
You may wonder why I don’t make my own bread.
I have before, but then I did the math and realized that homemade sprouted bread would cost about five or six dollars per loaf (I forget exactly how much, but it wouldn’t save any time or money).
Most of the time my parents are able to stop by Trader Joe’s when they’re in the area, and they buy about seven loaves at a time for us to freeze.
Whatever works, right? Good luck on your bread-buying endeavors.
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