Are you getting fatter the more you eat whole wheat bread? What you are eating may be "fake". Here's a trick to help you avoid the pitfall!

This year, the trend of healthy eating is becoming more and more popular, and whole wheat bread has become people's first choice as a model of healthy staple food.

However, many people have found that after eating whole wheat bread for a period of time, they actually gain weight. Is whole wheat bread another myth?

01

Why does eating whole wheat bread make you fatter?

The bread we usually eat is mostly made with wheat flour as the main ingredient, while whole wheat bread is mainly made with whole wheat flour.

Whole wheat flour is made from wheat that has been ground without removing the bran and germ.

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It retains most of the nutrients in wheat grains, not only contains more dietary fiber, but also more vitamins, minerals, etc., including rich unsaturated fatty acids.

It not only helps control blood sugar, but also helps balance the diet. It is absolutely fine as a high-quality staple food.

Since whole wheat bread is so good, why does it make people fatter the more they eat it?

One very important reason is that the whole wheat bread you eat is really not as "whole wheat" as you think.

If the bread is made from 100% whole wheat flour, few people can eat it.

100% whole wheat bread not only tastes dry, hard and rough, but also has a lingering fermented sour taste if no additional sugar and oil are added.

People describe the taste of a certain type of German-made whole wheat bread as being like a smelly rag that has been covered for several days, and one has to muster up a lot of courage every time they chew it.

This honest taste is obviously not very pleasant and is not conducive to the sales of whole wheat bread.

Therefore, when making whole wheat bread, a certain proportion of white flour or sugar, maltodextrin, sugar alcohol, etc. is often added to improve the taste.

Pick up a piece of whole-wheat bread at hand, and you may find that wheat flour is listed before whole-wheat flour on the content list, and there may even be sugar and additives.

What? Whole wheat bread contains less whole wheat flour than wheat flour?

Yes, this is because there are currently no standards for whole wheat bread in the country. As long as whole wheat flour is added to the bread, no matter how much, it can be claimed to be whole wheat bread.

Even if it only uses 1% whole wheat flour and 99% wheat flour, this bread can still shamelessly call itself a whole wheat bread, and even sell it at a higher price, taking advantage of those of us who want to eat healthy.

If you eat whole wheat bread like this every day, you will naturally get fatter and fatter. After all, you have unconsciously eaten too much refined flour and even sugar.

02

How to choose between various whole wheat breads?

To avoid this pitfall, be sure to read the recipe when choosing whole wheat bread.

However, since there is currently no requirement for bread manufacturers to indicate the proportion of whole wheat flour in the recipe, most of the time we can only infer the proportion of ingredients by the order of the ingredients on the recipe sheet.

Because the ingredient lists of packaged foods are sorted by the amount of ingredients added, this order can be used as a reference with confidence.

If whole wheat flour ranks first, then the proportion of whole wheat flour used must be relatively high, and such whole wheat bread can be bought.

If whole wheat flour is ranked after wheat flour, then it is most likely a whole wheat bread in name only, and is essentially just ordinary white bread.

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There are also some extreme examples, where whole wheat flour appears outside the top five. It is obvious that the content of whole wheat flour in this whole wheat bread is really negligible, and it is very likely that a tiny bit of whole wheat flour is added just for the sake of the name.

Of course, there is a pitfall here.

Some whole-wheat breads will kindly indicate that the amount of whole-wheat bread flour added is greater than 50%, but whole-wheat bread flour cannot be completely equated with whole-wheat flour. After all, whole-wheat bread flour also contains wheat flour.

If the amount of whole wheat flour added to whole wheat bread flour is only 20%, then the whole wheat flour content in the bread is actually not high in the end.

In addition, even if whole wheat flour ranks first, it does not necessarily mean that it is absolutely healthy.

After all, there is the hidden killer called sugar!

If sugar or dextrin ranks higher, then this whole wheat bread is still not a good staple food, but of course its taste will be relatively good.

In addition to sugar, don't forget to pay attention to the fat content. With high fat content, the calories of bread are naturally high, and too high a content is not good for your healthy life.

But the fat content also affects the taste, so you can try to find a middle ground between taste and low calories first.

All in all, whole wheat bread is definitely a good staple food, but the prerequisite is that the whole wheat bread you eat is "real" enough.

Author: Sydney

Review | Song Shuang, Associate Researcher, Institute of Nutrition and Health, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention

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