BellaOnline Forums Food and Wine Low Carb The Bread Debate

Just how necessary is a slice of bread in a daily diet??

Im not an expert on the subject by any means.. I just know that bread seems to 'bind' me up and it doesnt burn off very easily! <img src="/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

That and it really isn't very tasty..rather bland when eaten all by itself.

When my daughter was just a few years old I was concerned with how she ate..some times she would go weeks with barely eating her food..and other times she would eat everything in sight..but rarely would she eat bread... I mentioned this to the doctor and he said not to worry..children know when their bodies need something.. and when they're really eating..they're growing and their body needs that extra food.

I kept that bit of information tucked away in the back of my mind and when my son came along and he went through these same stages I didn't worry too much..because of it.

Now I sit and watch the little toddlers in my daycare go through the same things.. the don't eat the crusts on their bread..and very often they dont eat their bread at all! lol ...they pull their ppj's apart and just eat what's inside...same with their grilled cheese sandwiches... or their corn dogs.. they remove the cornbread and just eat the dog.. Same with their peanutbutter or cheese sandwich snack crackers...pull 'em apart and eat whats on the inside..leaving the plain ol' cracker there all alone and untouched..


hmm.. do you think they know something we don't??


just an observation and thought here..

no one food is necessary. it can be replaced by something else. however, if you find bread to be untasty, are you eating a good quality bread, or wonder-schmunder white bread ?

OK, I did an article on the topic -

http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art32299.asp

White bread has very few nutrients at all. If your aim is to get in fiber, iron, calcium etc then white bread is a REALLY bad way to get it. Also if you are gluten-intolerant it could actually cause you issues. If you are fine with gluten, it's really best to at least eat whole grain wheat or dark rye, for the added fiber and nutrient benefits.

If by bind you up you mean you get constipated, constipation is traditionally a problem when you don't get enough fiber. Whole grain has much more fiber than white bread - so if anything, eating white bread would give you *more* problem with constipation, not less.

As far as burning white bread off, most certainly white bread has lots of sugars and hardly any other value. So yes if you eat a lot of white bread, you'll be adding on fat <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

That all being said, I know many people who are gluten intolerant. So it might be that you are bloating from eating a wheat product. You might try not eating any bread, pasta etc. for 2 weeks and see how you feel.

I really have to ask though - with so many people being gluten intolerant, why are we eating bread anyway? You can easily get great fiber from incredibly nutrient-rich sources like broccoli, strawberries, blackberries, blueberries. You also get incredible nutrients and antioxidants from those sources. I just don't see the great appeal of even whole grain bread. It's nice for sandwiches. But it's hardly a necessary component of life on this earth ... and heck, even if the package says "whole grain" - it doesn't have to be 100% whole grain. So it's important to actually read the package.

Your stomach can only hold X amount of food a day. It's important to look at what you eat and consider just what each item offers to your body.

Here's nutrition information off a multi-grain slice of bread. So the "ultimate nutrition" a bread can offer you.

per slice:
12g carbs
2g of that is fiber
2.5g protein
1g fat
.2g of that is saturated fat

under 5% of your daily value of: calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorous, potassium, zinc, copper, vitamin B6, vitamin K.

11% selenium
19% manganese
7% thiamin
6% niacin

I'm sorry, none of those numbers are very compelling to me. Am I going to eat 20+ slices of bread to get in my calcium? I can get 10 times the manganese in a cup of tea - and far more other benefits, too! Spinach provides great nutrition. Tuna and brazil nuts have incredibly more selenium. Those offer a ton of other benefits as well.

It just seems to me that bread is barely nutritive. It's main purpose in the medieval days was to keep the farmers full of instant energy so they could plow the fields without dropping. It was hardly thought of as having high nutrients. That's why people ate vegetables and craved fish and protein, for the important nutrients in those items. Bread was the staple that made them work hard. We hardly need that instant-energy for hard manual labour in modern lives.

I love mountain biking, and even most of my mountain biking friends do not gorge on bread ... they eat grilled foods and veggies. We have plenty of energy.

hi lisa,

my body seems to need some sort of grain product. i won't argue with you on its lower nutrient than vegetables. i know my body needs veggies, as well.

in fact, i don't know why my body needs some grains, but it does seem to do better when i get some.

Definitely there are times that our body craves things that it actually is missing. When I was a child I kept eating dirt, and the doctors finally realized I had a low iron count. Now if your body is craving twinkies, I think that's probably another thing altogether though <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

It might be worth it for you to sit down and see what the bread you're craving is high in, and then figure out if you are low in that - maybe try eating other things that are high in that nutrient and see if your body likes it.

hey lisa,

now that sounds like advice that i would give. are you sure we aren't on the same frequency ? LOL.

i suspect though, that it is not a mineral or vitamin, but rather something more endemic to grain - something that is not apt to be listed on an ingredient list.

Our brain cells are vibrating, gymeejet <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I suppose that could very well be, we are still mere infants in our scientific understanding of how various items affect the human body. We thoughts we were so smart to figure out Vitamin E and Vitamin A and such in the last century or so - only to discover that there are many TYPES of those vitamins, and that they act differently, and need other things to work well.

So who knows what is actually in grain that our body needs! As long as you eat healthy foods and you're not eating 2 loaves of white bread a day, I imagine your body knows what it's doing <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> If you can, I would slowly move yourself towards dark whole-grains, just to get the most nutrients out of the experience that you can. But who knows, if you are craving Wonder, maybe it's the bleached white bread that is supplying that mysterious item.

gosh lisa,

i wouldn't touch wonder with a 10-foot pole. lol.

i do eat good breads when i eat them. the one i eat the most of is from a company called "bran for life". they make quite a few varieties, but all of them are free of partially hydrogenated oils, and preservatives.

i am guessing that my body does prefer some starch, as opposed to all fruits and veggies.

even though i try to get my vits and mins from my food, i also take them in pill form. i am so active that i don't believe i could ever get the optimal amount from just food alone. but if i am mistaken, then the worse thing that occurs is i have expensive pee. lol.