UPDATED: June 1, 2025
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Among the cultural traditions of Western European people, use of the poetic phrase, "Staff of Life," is primarily in reference to bread. If you're going to eat bread, a food that is usually highly processed, make sure that it contains lots of fiber from whole grains, a minimal amount of added sugars, only natural ingredients, and additional nutrients from seeds and nuts. Here's what you'll want to know about breads, and how they impact our health:
Our Daily Bread
Humans are among the few species of animals that have multiple copies of the genes that enable the digestion of starches. We are able to turn complex carbohydrates into energy by breaking them down into glucose, with the help of amylase digestive enzymes. It is the amylase found in saliva that releases sweet-tasting maltose when we chew on a piece of bread. A different kind of amylase produced by the pancreas is secreted into the small intestine and continues carbohydrate digestion.
Our complicated relationship with carbs has at least an 800,000 year old evolutionary history. Consequently, what has been hard-wired into our DNA makes it very difficult for us to reduce our carbohydrate consumption, despite the unhealthy consequences of a caloric excess. For better or for worse, we are simply a carb-loving species.
About Starches
Starches are complex carbohydrate polymers (polysaccharides) made from glucose molecules chained together by chemical bonds. There are two basic molecular structures; linear and helical chains (amylose) and branching chains (amylopectin). Green plants store their chemical energy as starches. Glycogen, found in the liver and muscles of animals, is a highly branched amylopectin. The most commonly consumed dietary starches are found in cereal grains such as wheat, rice, and corn, and in root vegetables such as potatoes, turnips, and manioc.
Glucose mainly comes from chlorophyll-containing plants that employ the biochemical process known as photosynthesis. Water and carbon dioxide are combined in a reaction that’s driven by the energy of sunlight, and oxygen is released as a by-product. Every cell in our body requires energy, and its metabolic energy primarily comes from mitochondria using oxygen to “burn” glucose, converting it back into carbon dioxide and water. In a very real sense, our bodies are made of stardust, and they are powered by starlight.
Health Impact
Carbohydrates such as starches and sugars contribute to the body’s metabolic energy, whether that energy is used immediately, or stored as fats and glycogen. Consequently, calorie-dense carbs contribute to the risk of becoming overweight or obese, with the attendant health consequences. There is another health impact of carbs, and that is their effect on blood sugar, the insulin response, and the risk of developing insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.
Significant blood glucose spikes after eating rapidly digested carbs can contribute to cardiovascular disease risk and insulin resistance. These spikes can occur in healthy individuals, and steps should be taken to minimize their occurrence. One way to do that is to avoid sugars, especially when they are typically consumed in large quantities in beverages such as soft drinks, fruit juices, and sweetened coffees and teas, and in foods such as candies, sweet snacks, and refined grains and flours found in white rice and white bread. Knowing a food’s glycemic index (GI) can help people make healthier choices.
Dietary fats and oils, along with dietary fiber and protein, can reduce the rate of absorption of glucose and mitigate blood sugar spikes, which is why it is healthier to eat a whole fruit than just its juice. The sequence in which foods are eaten in a meal has an impact on blood sugar spikes. Research suggests that higher GI carbs should be eaten last. Even with a normal fasting blood glucose and hemoglobin A1c, blood sugar spikes caused by high GI carbs can pave the way for insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. This article has more about the hidden dangers of blood sugar spikes.
Healthy Starches
The term, healthy starches, may seem like an oxymoron if what comes to mind are macaroni or mashed potatoes, but there’s also a lot to like about this class of carbohydrates. Resistant starches are complex carbohydrates that avoid digestion in the small intestine, and function as prebiotics when they are metabolized by the bacteria inhabiting the large intestine. As a result, resistant starches won't raise blood glucose levels, making them a better choice for people who have, or are at risk for, type 2 diabetes.
Resistant starches contribute to feelings of satiety after eating, are associated with improved blood lipid profiles, and can help with weight loss. Once inside the large intestine, resistant starches function in a similar way to soluble, fermentable fiber, nourishing the microbiome and promoting a diversity of health-promoting organisms.
When bacteria in the gut ferment resistant starches, they create short-chain fatty acid compounds such as butyrate and propionate. Butyrate is associated with a lower rate of colorectal cancer, while propionate has been linked to lower inflammation and improved immune function.
Good sources of resistant starches include beans, peas, lentils, and other legumes; whole grains, especially oats and barley; cooked and then chilled brown rice, whole-grain cereals, and sweet potatoes. For a closer look at the impact of dietary fiber on the intestinal microbiome, see this article, and:
Boosting the Resistant Starch Content of Foods
The way people prepare starch-containing foods can affect their resistant starch content. The initial cooking can reduce the amount of resistant starches, but for some foods they can be increased by cooling them after cooking. Once most starchy foods have been cooked and cooled, reheating doesn’t seem to affect the resistant starch content, and in some cases, it can even increase it.
For the first four days after cooking, each day of cooling increases the percentage of resistant starch. When it comes to breads, the degree to which resistant starch is able to form depends upon the baking temperature of the bread, and whether it is subsequently refrigerated or frozen. The rate of conversion to resistant starch is nearly twice as great in a freezer compared to a refrigerator. Consequently, freezing bread shortly after it is baked will reduce its glycemic index.
If foods high in resistant starch are new to your diet, treat them as you would fiber. Add them gradually, and drink plenty of water. It will take a while for your microbiome to adjust to their bounty, and in the interim you may experience some flatulence and bloating.
Choosing Our Daily Bread
When it comes to bread choices, the healthiest are those made entirely from whole grains. Mass-produced, ultra-processed breads such as white bread typically contain artificial preservatives to increase their shelf life, are high in sugar, salt, and unhealthy oils, and lack important nutrients such as fiber. If molds won't form on a piece of bread that's left out on the kitchen counter, that's a clue that we should also avoid it.
I recommend learning more about the healthiest kinds of breads, so you can become a smarter shopper. When comparing the different commercial brands' ingredients labels, look for those with a dietary fiber content that's at least twice the amount of the total sugars per serving.
Whole-grain breads are generally considered the healthiest because they are higher in fiber and contain more natural nutrients. The most common are whole wheat breads, but look for other kinds of breads that are made with whole-grain rye or barley. Sprouted whole-grain breads, such as the Ezekiel brand, and seeded whole-grain sourdough breads, are also worth trying.
What About Gluten?
Only those people with physiological gluten intolerance will need to avoid gluten, and only consume baked goods that are certified to be gluten-free. That is unlikely to occur in the absence of celiac disease (aka non-tropical sprue), an autoimmune disorder that primarily affects the small intestine. However, there are a great many people who don’t have the disease but blame their gastrointestinal symptoms on gluten. As a result, going gluten-free has become something of a health food fad. For more information on the nocebo effect that results from believing that one has a “gluten sensitivity,” see this article.
Don’t Be Fooled By Bread Labels
Just because the front of the label says “Healthy Multi-Grain Bread” or “Hearty Grains and Seeds,” you still need to carefully read the ingredients list. If the bread contains refined or enriched flours, emulsifiers, preservatives, and other substances you wouldn’t find in a home kitchen, it is an ultra-processed food and should be considered unfit for consumption by humans who value their health.
When it comes to buying bread at the grocery store, there aren’t many healthy choices. One exception is Ezekiel 4:9 Sprouted Whole Grain Bread. A 34-gram slice has 80 calories and contains 0.5 g fat (0 g trans and saturated fat), 75 mg sodium, 15 g carbs (3 g dietary fiber, 0 g total sugars), and 5 g protein. Its organic flour is made from sprouted wheat, barley, millet, lentils, soybeans, and spelt.
It might be easier to find Dave’s Killer Bread Organic Thin-Sliced Powerseed Bread. It has 70 calories per 32-gram slice. It is basically a whole wheat bread with added grains and seeds, and is sweetened with fruit juices. Total fat per slice is 1.5 g (0 g trans and saturated fat), 100 mg sodium, 14 g total carbs (4 g dietary fiber, 2 g total sugars), and 4 g protein.
These two examples gives you an idea of what to look for on the ingredients label when choosing a healthier, mass-produced bread. My mentioning specific product names should not be taken as endorsements. Do your own investigation of what’s available locally, what the breads cost per slice, and reach your own decision about what to buy.
Fresh from the Artisanal Bakery
Freshly baked breads made without preservatives and other artificial ingredients will go stale or become moldy in a few days unless they are frozen. Most frozen breads will keep for at least three months if wrapped tightly to exclude air and prevent the dehydration that causes freezer burn. If frozen for too long, breads may lose some of their desirable taste and texture.
With whole loaves, slicing the bread before freezing makes it convenient to use only a few slices at a time. Remove the number of slices you want, seal them in a plastic bag, and thaw them at room temperature for an hour or so. They can also be thawed overnight in the refrigerator. If the crust is too soft after thawing, heat the slices in a toaster oven for about 5-10 minutes at 350°F (175°C). Slices of frozen bread can also be toasted straight from frozen by adding an extra minute of two.
Thawing bread in the microwave has unpredictable results, and should never be done for more than 30 seconds or the bread will become too dry and chewy. Usually, 10-15 seconds on high is all that's needed to partially thaw a few slices, and then let them come up to room temperature. If you'll be making sandwiches in the morning to be eaten at lunchtime, keep the slices frozen and you won't need to put them in a cooler.
Free Yourself from Fructose
While a freshly baked loaf of bread from a local artisanal bakery is hard to beat for aroma, taste, and texture, consumers are at a disadvantage if they don’t know its ingredients. It will most likely contain sucrose, extracted from sugar cane and sugar beets. Sucrose (table sugar, confectioner’s sugar, brown sugar, etc.) is a disaccharide sugar molecule that is half fructose and half glucose.
Honey, maple syrup, agave syrup, molasses, golden syrup, corn syrup, and fruit juices are all high in fructose, and should therefore be avoided. Honey is more than half fructose, with a 4:3 ratio of fructose to glucose, so it is not healthier than table sugar. In order to eliminate fructose from your diet as much as possible, you will want to limit your consumption of most commercially baked breads.
As I have said many times before, and will not hesitate to say again, fiber is your friend, and fructose is your foe. Fructose consumption increases the risk for developing obesity and dyslipidemia (high cholesterol and triglycerides). Fructose also increases the likelihood of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and cardiovascular disorders.
It is much healthier to use only glucose in almost all of your baking, as long as you don’t have an elevated hemoglobin A1c. If we absorb too much glucose over too short a period of time, it results in blood sugar and insulin spikes that can put a strain on the pancreas and contribute to type 2 diabetes.
Dietary fiber, protein, and fats can slow the absorption of glucose in the small intestine, so take that into consideration in your recipes and meal planning. People who have diabetes, pre-diabetes, or have a family history of diabetes should limit their intake of glucose, as well as fructose and sucrose. Of course, if you need to lose weight, then you will want to cut way back on your consumption of baked goods.
Baking with Dextrose
The best way to ensure healthy bread is to bake your own. You can purchase hard wheat berries in bulk and grind them to make flour. Using a bread maker can simplify the process. To make your bread as healthy as possible, use dextrose instead of the sugar found in typical recipes.
For doughs that require yeast, glucose is necessary for the chemical reaction that produces the carbon dioxide that makes the dough rise. Glucose, in the form of dextrose monohydrate powder made by the hydrolysis of corn starch, can be used as a sugar substitute in baking.
If you are addicted to sugar, dextrose will not taste as sweet because the fructose in sucrose is super-sweet. The upside to dextrose is that with about 20 percent less sweetness, the taste of the other ingredients such as vanilla will come through a lot better when using it.
When baking with dough that uses yeast, dextrose will work better than sucrose. That’s because the yeast will readily metabolize glucose and produce carbon dioxide, which causes the dough to rise. If you’re using a bread-maker, put the yeast on the bottom, then the dextrose powder, then the flour. The “quick-bake” setting may be preferable when making bread with dextrose.
If a recipe calls for 1 cup of granulated sugar, then use 1 cup of powdered dextrose instead. However, if a recipe goes by weights, it becomes a little more complicated. A cup of sugar weighs approximately 250 grams, while a cup of dextrose powder weighs approximately 180 grams. So, you will need to multiply the sugar weight by 0.72 to calculate the equivalent weight of dextrose.
Some recipe adjustments will need to be made because dextrose powder will soak up more liquid than granulated sugar. If you don’t want your baked goods to be too dry, you will need to use 10-12 percent more butter, oil, water, milk, yogurt, etc. than the recipe requires You will also want to use larger eggs.
Baked goods made with dextrose will be done sooner. You will want to use a slightly lower temperature (about 10°C/18°F less), and keep an eye on things as they get close to being done. Remember to enjoy the journey, as well as the destination. I wish you happy baking, and healthy eating!
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