Can bread be healthy? With Vanessa Kimbell and Tim Spector
It’s no exaggeration to say that bread shaped modern humanity - it was the cultivation of wheat for flour that transformed our ancestors from hunter-gatherers to city dwellers.
Today, millions of us start the day with a slice of toast, and most lunches in the US and UK are wrapped in a slice of bread or a burger bun as a cheap, flexible, and delicious energy source.
But modern industrial processes designed to reduce the time and cost of baking mean today’s bread would be unrecognizable to our ancestors.
Today’s bread tastes good but has lost most of its nutritional content. With most of its fiber gone, and no time for bacteria to work its fermenting magic, bread has become a simple starch, rapidly turned into sugar in our blood and offering little to support our gut bacteria. For this reason, bread is increasingly demonized as an evil carb.
In today’s episode, Jonathan speaks to two authorities on the subject to ask: Can bread can ever be healthy?
Vanessa is a specialist in personalised bread and her doctorate in nutrition & digestabilty of bread is in Baking as Lifestyle Medicine & preventative healthcare.
Professor Tim Spector is a co-founder at ZOE and one of the top 100 most cited scientists in the world.
If you want to uncover the right foods for your body, head to joinzoe.com/podcast and get 10% off your personalized nutrition program.
Timecodes:
00:00 - Intro
00:09 - Topic introduction
02:13 - Quickfire questions
04:20 - Why bread matters
05:44 - Is bread empty calories?
09:38 - What is bread?
12:39 - What is bran?
13:33 - The difference between the types of grains
15:56 - What is the impact of bread on our microbes?
19:06 - What should you look for in bread?
21:18 - What sort of bread should you look for?
22:49 - Supermarket bread is not fresh!
23:29 - On gluten intolerance
26:24 - How should we think about sourdough?
37:13 - How to know whether sourdough is real or fake?
40:46 - Practical advice on how to choose bread
44:25 - Summary
46:23 - Goodbyes
46:34 - Outro
Buy Tim's book, Food For Life, here: amzn.to/4amZinu
Episode transcripts are available here: joinzoe.com/learn/category/nu...
Follow Vanessa: / vanessakimbell
Follow Tim: / timspector
Follow ZOE on Instagram: / zoe
Started making yeast bread during COVID lockdown. I found the process easier than I expected. I branched out and followed a KZhead video on how to begin a sourdough starter, that too was easier than I expected. I'm now on a schedule baking sourdough, in fact just baked two loaves of sourdough today. Vanessa is right, it is dead easy to do it once you're on a schedule and you have a strong sourdough starter. I haven't done a cost comparison but I believe homemade bread isn't just better for you, better tasting, but also less expensive.
Yeah I buy 20 kg of flour. For about 15 dollars straight at the mill. Plus some wholegrain. Bake about 400 gram breads 3 a week. That about 3.5-4 months of bread for us for 15 dollars. 30 cents of flour per bread let's say 35 with the bakingcost, water, dishes and salt. Buying that much bread would cost us 185 dollars. For low quality bread from the supermarket. Or 325 dollar if buying bakery breads. So around a 90 percent discount money wise. We divide the dough prep and baking time so in total we spent very little active handling time with the bread. Plus it freezes well.
@BasilLange thanks for the detailed cost breakdown. I've never bothered because I'm going to keep baking my own bread regardless. Good to know how much less expensive it is than buying grocery bread. I am now experimenting with whole wheat sourdough sandwich rolls. First couple were too dense and heavy. Last batch I added 1/4 teaspoon (a tiny amount) of yeast and they were perfect. Keep baking and sharing.
Is yeast in bread bad for us if we are prone to yeast infections?
@@anonymousanonymous7304 Nah. But white flour is.
I have purchased bread at the grocery less than 10 times in the last 10 years. It is crazy easy to make my own.
I once worked in a bakery in NYC, we made 80 loaves of white bread a minute, 24/7. I have never eaten white bread again.
Lol, why?
We bought a German household grain mill (which looks really beautiful in the kitchen) to make our own sourdough wholemeal rye bread from grain. We buy in 25kg bags from local organic farms or get delivered once a year. It took a couple of attempts to get it right be since then has become part of household chores / routine which barely takes more time than go to the shop and buy it.
I go to a local bread bakery. The bread would knock you out if i hit you with it. The owner is from Germany. Multi-grain, whole rye, different types of sourdough including sprouted. It is amazing.
lucky you
I recently found a German market that specializes in bread.The shop worker told me all the breads are made by German bakers the traditional way with 70% Rye and 30% whole wheat blend in their dark rye bread. I had no idea what she was talking about but 70% rye sounds good to me lol and yes it's very delicious!
I stopped eating bread two years ago. I'll probably never eat it again. The baking, of commercially available bread, is for profit, not nutrition.
Where is the long term research showing that bread with gluten is healthy. Long term means 30-40 years or more. My research pointed to bread with gluten being bad for everyone. ZOE needs to do a very long lifetime study then tell us the results in 30 to 70 years time!!
I also gave up bread (grains) 2 1/2 years ago. Nothing in this video convinces me that eating whole grain, sour dough bread is better for me than not eating it.
@@mockturtle1402 Yep, and the lady who is advocating, "Whole grain sourdough". Doesn't look a picture of health to me!
@@thomasrobinson4401 That's unnecessarily judgmental and potentially sexist also. Are you evaluating the men's appearance when you decide whether to take their advice or not? This is the kind of comment that is so irksome because it's smug and ugly. You can agree with the original comment, without taking a pot shot at some woman's appearance. Why would you ever think of doing that? Why would that even occur to you? It doesn't with regard to the men, check yourself please. Where does the impulse come from?
@@Kyarrix I do apologise. But that's the impression I took from what I was watching. I may be wrong, I'm not a doctor. How is referring to a female, as lady, sexist? The gentlemen look healthier to me. They might not be. Just my opinion.
I'm glad that Tim stepped into clarify for Vanessa about the sourdough, she was not easy to understand
I think the biggest point which was missed here is how and where to get good flour for making bread. As noted without choosing right flour you are essentially eating junk.
Yes i agree
You grind your own, or buy known freshly ground.
@@eugeniebreida1583 In the western world its not easy to find a place to grind or get whole ungrinded wheat. Would be open if you know of any good options
@@n1ananda Just order it online.
Hi I live in East Yorkshire and can recommend an organic bakery that grows and mills organic flours. They sell online, Side Oven Bakery. Happy healthy baking.
I'm French. Don't believe what you are sold, outside France, as 'French xxx' is what we eat in France. Every time I was in the UK and tasted ( and tested :-) ) French baguette or French croissant or French whatever ( except wines ) I had to spit it afterwards ( It includes cheese, kept near frozen, which deserves death penalty ).
Queues on Sunday mornings at my nearest French bakery are long, often over 5 minutes to get inside the door, let alone queue up, choose the exact things to buy, wait for stuff to be wrapped appropriately for everything except a baguette.
I've must pick up on something that Tim Spector said. 80% of the British people have a sandwich for their lunch and that only happened since the 1980s. When I first started work in the mid 60s, 80%, probably more, of the people had sandwiches for lunch As the years went by, eating habits changed, and by the time I retired 17 years ago, hardly anybody brought in sandwiches. Co-incidently, I spent most of my working life working as an engineer in a large bakery and over that perion of time, the demand for bread dropped massively. There were 3 large bakeries in the city where I worked and they have all now closed. We were always told that the decline in bread sales was because of changing eating habits where people had a much wider choice than a sandwich.
Maybe saying sandwich was code word for fast food burgers and stuff like that people eat a lot more of that kind of thing now than they did before the 80s
Agree. Spector is a superb businessman, good at getting funding and Brilliant at Marketing. But his science is rubbish. Unreliable. For example, all his " fibre, eat 30 plants etc" ignores how detrimental that is for anyone with autoimmune conditions or those with gut issues. All his talk of the gut bio and he has no understanding how damaging fibre can be for many people. He should look at some gastro enterology research for a start - even FODMAPS which is scientifically identified. There is something quite naive about him, he gets excited and makes out he has discovered stuff that is simply new to him but has been known for years. He is so flippant and superficial and would have said the 1980s because that's when he stepped out into the adult world - not based on any historical accuracy.
I make my own sourdough pizza. I feed my sourdough with a product called “dark rye flour” which is described as flour that’s made from what is left when making white rye flour. 100 g of this flour has 45 g carb, 31 g fiber, 3g sugars. It’s extremely inexpensive. When I make the pizza dough, I add whole wheat flour, a pinch of salt, and a drizzle of oil. I buy this “dark the flour” at a specialty shop run by some conservative Mennonites, here in Pennsylvania.
Dark Rye flour is fairly easy to get hold of over here on the UK. Some of the larger supermarkets sell it and spelt. We can also buy them online direct from the Millers.
Started making sourdough during lockdown but stopped afterwards. Now feeling really inspired to start again and will look for Vanessa's book. Thanks Zoe team yet again. You do such great work 👍
Hi Sharon.. what recipe did you have for the sourdough bread? Please
If you find out, please let us know...@@suzytalib1612
So, I just did a test online looking at different supermarkets bread and Hovis Wholemeal Granary has a list of about 10 ingredients, including sugar and caramelized sugar - so you instantly think BAD - but it has 6.8g of Fibre, compared to 2.4g of sugar. So high Fibre and a ration of 2.<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="481">8:1</a>. Whereas Gail SF Sourdough only has flour, water and salt, plus yoghurt/milk (obviously being sourdough) so you think GOOD and it only has 1.9g of sugar but it only has 2.1g of fiber so a low ratio of 1.<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="781">13:1</a>…. So how the heck do you know….?
I once heard from a nutrition professor that you may decide for a loaf of bread if you hit your head with it it should “hurt” and not feel soft as if a pillow hit would feel. I found that a pretty good advice, together with - of course - carefully reading the ingredients list on the label. Thank you ZOE to those very high level and interesting subjects and for bringing specialized scholars to talk to us!
When I lived in the Netherlands they had bread that looked very good (like German bread, which was what I wanted) but when you touched it it was actually soft like white bread. I felt so betrayed.
i’m so interested in this. Believe all you say and feel much better trying to follow your advice. At 80 years i wish i had heard this a long time ago. Trying to get my children to follow it but it’s hard work. Thank you all.
Love the format. Great conversations. Love the intro fast fire questions and the end of interview wrap up. Many podcast interviewers could learn a lot from watching these.
I have made all of my bread for a couple decades. Bread maker and by hand. So happy you didn’t tell us not to eat bread. Delighted to eat the bad bread the way Vanessa suggested. Made my own recipe that includes whole cooked grains along with the flour. I give a loaf away when we go to dinner at friends’ houses. Thank you for this discussion…thoroughly enjoyed the questions and responses.
Will you please share your Recipe ? Thank you.
Don't eat bread daily at least there are a lot of carbs in bread, and carbs aren't very healthy.
Carbs are healthy. It depends on the type of carbs. Didn't you watch the video? @@leagueaddict8357
Jonathan, this is Ken from the states. Love the way you do these really indepth but simplified interviews with superb questions to really knowledgeable experts. Especially interesting is the historical backdrop on the historical development of bread in this episode. I developed a bias against bread, but I may even go back to making my own (short lived a long time ago). Good stuff!
With all due respect, most of us ordinary folk work 2 jobs, have families to take care of and perhaps elderly parents, and really really dont have time to bake our own bread or have relationships with bread. Be good to have a few practical tips on what we might choose in a supermarket, which is how most of us get our food. Thanks
The only practical thing I heard was to look for a bread with a ratio of 4/5:1 carbohydrate:fibre
”most of us ordinary fol work 2 jobs”, What???!!! what country do you live in where most people need to have 2 jobs?
Here in the USA many work two jobs.
@@CaseyKCRichards How come? hard to understand why they cant survive having only one job.
@@pontusschroder8361 Because we they don’t want to just survive- we live in a materialistic rich country . Me, i have one job and I’m not materialistic. I like my spare time
Great video. Artisan bakeries are few and far between, we need more.
I make sourdough bread. I grind whole grain and I add fresh ground Flax seed, other seeds, herbs and spices. I make bread sticks with the dough, and even the children love them.
I gave up bread a while ago, but after watching this, perhaps I don’t need to - you made me realise that not all bread were created equal and I do love a bit of sourdough!
This is so interesting, and I have been buying an Organic Spelt + Rye Sourdough for over a year and enjoy this solid dense loaf so much more and my stomach does not get bloated with it :-)
Hmm. I appreciated this airing very much. I would like to have this topic reviewed with cardiologist Dr Steven Gundry on to participate in the discussion about how the gluten lectin does over-activate the immune system and make the gut lining vulnerable to leaky gut and a host of issues. Please!
Fondly remembering the rye bread baked by my grandmother from local whole grain flower and fermenting the dough with microbes she had for decades in Savonia, Finland. They have a local speciality called "kalakukko" where fish from the nearby lake is baked into the rye bread. It is decent food!
Interesting. Have you tried making it? Sounds like a great snack.
This channel deserves billions of views, having this information in the format of a video is so informative and easy to understand. Subscribed!
I disagree totally. I see this channel as a clever and wicked part of the misinformation world we are surrounded by . It is dangerous. A wolf in sheep's clothing (which is precisely what Fabian Socialists are, and be in no doubt, these are Fabian Socialists). The original emblem, or shield, of the Fabians was an actual wolf in sheep's clothing. Wheat, is entirely bad for humans. All humans react to it, to some degree or other, and it always displaces what could be really nourishing foods, from their place in the diet. All the filling and none of the bread would be just fine! Pie contents and no pastry = perfect! The wheat was always a con.
My father was diagnosed as a coeliac after a biopsy and 2 years of terrible symptoms. I take after him and we have a lot of the same symptoms/autoimmune conditions etc Since I was a teenager I had bloating and dark circles under my eyes and rhinitis. Didn't know why til recent years. I started gluten free because if I eat anything with gluten I bloat and get these symptoms within 1 to 4 hours. I can tell if something has gluten in it just by my dark circles, even if I didn't think I'd eaten gluten. I don't have coeliac disease (yet). I have other allergies but they don't give me these specific symptoms. If it's not gluten sensitivity then what is it guys?
Barely a mention of fake sourdough bread. Companies exist that supply bakeries with sourdough starter in powder form. A baker can chose his sourdough powder depending on the taste he wants and then adds his powder as magic fairy dust into his plastic bread and sell it as sourdough bread without that powder forming part of any fermentation.
The earliest bread was made about 14,000 years ago. It is a strech to say we "evolved: on bread. 14,000 years is a teeny sliver of time in our evolution. Many people think it led to poor health among the Egyptians. Their statues often depict people with pot bellies.
Flies don't crave on bread compared to greens, vegetables and meat, I trust the living kingdom, more than the humans 🤣😂😉
14000 years is enough time for evolutionary changes in this respect. For instance the genetic variation of ALDH2*2 is believed by researchers to have commenced approx. 7000 to 10000 years ago when alcohol was first fermented from rice.This affects alcohol digestion in East Asian races today.
@@Paraclef Flies eat poo and rotting meat
Stirling, Scotland UK. I love your classes, thank you!
Thank you for this Podcast. Who knew that bread could be such a complicated topic! I assume that the range of product available is for commercial reasons and to satisfy customer demand for variables such as taste, cost and shelf life as well as nutritional content. Quality obviously varies but hopefully we have moved on from the Victorian era when white bread was promoted because it was cheap to produce, mainly because it contained large amounts of chalk!
These podcasts are terrific! Thank you for entertaining and informing me simultaneously! Johnathan is a most engaging and intelligent Everyman, and the balance between the energy and personalities of the guests is always masterfully handled. And, of course, who doesn’t love Tim. Altogether, a beautifully produced and very useful podcast every single time! Could you please talk about “sprouted grains” next time you discuss bread. Thanks!
Thank you so much for your very informative video with excellent presentations ! Much appreciated !
Great vid. I went to the site for a local bakery (Bread Alone in NY) that I use and am happy that they make my sourdough with "a long and cool overnight rest and has a very strong sour flavor" and only 3 ingredients. YAY. I had called before to make sure they did not bromate the flour so I knew it was pretty good - now after this vid I feel even better about it!! Thank you!
I’m in the middle of this video, and I haven’t read the comments yet, but my first thought about store-bought bread is that many have dough-conditioners in them. Not to mention glyphosate in the wheat. Maybe it’s these agents , rather than gluten that accounts for the rise in sensitivity. I want to learn how to make my own sourdough, I’m inspired 😃
I’m going to get your book, Vanessa! x
There are many reasons. The process is a main one, and the change in our diets, resulting in less protective mucus in the gut and the lower levels of microbes and less diversity along with the fast process, low fibre bread and starving the microbes of fibre is the main issue however there is evidence of the emulsifiers and herbicides being negative too... but the big changes that drive most issues is the afore. mentioned.
I am from India and our staple wheat based bread is called `Roti`. It is made of whole wheat flour (chakki atta) and a pinch of salt ; that's it. The dough is kneaded with water, then flattened to thin round discs and cooked directly on stovetop.
Good stuff! Will try it. I remember living in Turkey near a city of Diyarbakir, and they made this delicious flat bread right there in the street stalls. Eat it with butter & honey or without anything.... delicious!
No human GI track can handle ANY GRAIN PRODUCT -aka FAKE FOODS ! No wheat ,No corn , NO oats , No rice ETC ETC
Chickpea is so much healthier 💯✅😋👍
Thanks to everyone. 💟🥀🥀🥀🥀
@@Tracertme What about Pumpernickel bread?Thanks. Valérie ❤️❤️
Fascinating video and I've just discovered we have a local baker specialising in slow-fermented sourdough breads so I'm going to try that out.
So glad you enjoyed it, that baker sounds fantastic!
I don't experience bloating when I eat bread, even sourdough, but I do get rashes. Nasty weepy ones. Don't think I have IBS
I've been doing sourdough for about four years now and milling wheat berries. If I can do it, others can too. It isn't that hard once you find your routine. It can sound complicated, but isn't once you learn how. It is also more forgiving than what I thought at first. Some people are perfectionists or a bit snobby about it-- but you can make really good bread without it being complicated. Give it a try. Vanessa is making me feel good about my choices. Great video! Thank you! One more thought-- modern flour has been developed to have more gluten. I think whole grain bread doesn't have as much. You can also look into ancient grains like einkorn. I haven't done that yet.
Wheat is a grain, not a berry. You foolish yuppie
Thank u great tips !
Sounds good Cari. If you have any good and easy recipes, I'd love them if you're able.
Please share how you make your sour dough
😊c
Started well but quickly lost focus on the realities facing most people when shopping on a budget. The advice given will resonate well with those already into “good” bread but won’t help people who can’t afford to pay 3 or 4 times more than supermarket prices to an artisan baker. Some comment on the benefits of home baked non sourdough bread would also have been helpful.
I agree.
My reply won’t be popular - just eat less of it. I know that access is also an issue and transport and if you have a big growing family - yes - yes - and yes those are all valid arguments but a KZhead channel on nutrition ain’t going to solve that no matter how you cut it. I would suggest a change of government might help - a little bit...until then...
I have a bread maker, with a timer, making your own is not as hard or time consuming, especially if you get a machine, although hand made is even better and is cheaper than the cheapest loaf.
Home baked non sourdough loaf, cost me 60p for a medium (750g) with decent flour/yeast/olive oil and salt. I follow the recipes from kzhead.info
Can you afford to eat crappy bread? Don’t care how poor you are, there is no reason to eat crap.
This is a very informative podcast, however all it tells me is that there is no bread available in supermarkets that is healthy. I might just stop eating bread since making my own bread is neither affordable or practical
Hi Homemade bread is generally cheaper. You probably know that. If you are lucky to have access to an oven it’s about 20 minutes of my time to make a loaf which lasts us , a couple, 5 days. Obviously I don’t know your circumstances but I am reminded that health is one of the most precious gifts to hold onto (together with relationships and a few other things,) sorry if that sounds patronising at all. I want to encourage starting bread making. It’s a hump to get over to get familiar but afterwards a nice short routine
😊
Exceptional quality. Authoritative and listener friendly. Congratulations to all involved.
I have never seen a single item of bread products in the UK that doesn't include a series of emulsifiers and industrial vegetable oils.
Thanks Vanessa, Tim and Jonathan - really well paced video with little time wasted - great work everyone!
Looks like Venessa is struggling with weight her self maybe she should stop stuffing bread
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="2220">37:00</a> Whole grain + bacteria + time = bread. That's absolutely great summary of bread discussion :). Great episode!
If you fancy sourdough but want less faff, and a lower energy cost for baking I recommend a pre ferment method. It produces a better, less dense texture than more basic methods and more flavour without having to maintain a starter. Top tip. Use 50% organic white bread flour with 50% of any good quality whole meal, malted or multigrain. 50% organic white has more flavour, less glyphosate contamination and is only a few pence more per loaf than non organic white. The preferment method I use, starts off with 25% of the flour (for one big loaf, I use 450g of flour in total), generous pinch of salt, half a yeast packet and water, keep it very wet, stir it, it should pull away from the side of the jug in strings. Leave this preferment, covered, to more than double in size. Then use the rest of the dried yeast packet, pinch of salt, 75% of the flour plus the preferment, to make a wettish dough. Leave to rise again. Line a baking tin with parchment paper, transfer to the tin, a little drizzle of olive oil on top, rubbed onto the top. Leave to rise again. Bake at 185C in a fan oven with 2 other loaves for 45 minutes. Leave to cool. Slice 2 of them, and bag for the freezer, keep one out, to eat fresh. There you have it, 3 wonderful loaves. The whole process takes a morning, but you can do other jobs in between.
Most bread in history was extremely healthy, as the process of making the bread was much better for ensuring a high quality end product. Like grounding the wheat into flour right before kneeding it into a dough. Wheat oxidizes very quickly. Old school methods also ensured that all the glutein in teh bread was used to raise and grow the dough. Bread is extremely healthy when made properly. Again, the culprit is not the food item but the processing method.
Soak, sprout, grind, ferment, bake/cook.
I’m just trying to make small changes at the moment and going from my processed white bread to sourdough seems like a brilliant idea - slow but steady changes for me !!
Tim is a Master Communicator! Vanessa went down a bit of a Chemistry rabbit hole but is clearly a Master of all things baked ! Well done all... Will definitely try proper artisan sourdough as I love good bread.
I thought Vanessa's contribution to discussion lifted the overall quality a lot.
A very interesting talk but I would have liked to hear more about brown wholemeal bread itself buying from a supermarket. I am never going to be making my own bread due to personal reasons. I buy a Multiseed wholemeal bread with 14% seeds which has a good ratio of Carbohydrate to Fibre per slice and good amount of Protein. I would have liked to hear about the benefits of eating Linseed. bread as well. I think most of us here know that white refined bread is not so healthy. Thank you.
Quite agree
I'm guessing you shop at sainsburys. I but their 14% seeded wholemeal bread and it's lovely. 🙂
@@gillmae5223 Clever you for working that one out! Lol. Yes it is good and has the right requirement of carbohydrate to fibre they were talking about & a high amount of protein but I am not so impressed with their Extra Thick Soft White Toastie sliced bread that tastes nice & was a treat instead of turning to cakes & biscuits now that I have just discovered it contains Niacin. Have you seen my other comment about that. I won't be buying it anymore now. I shall be more healthy to! 😊
Ask yourself if grains, in any shape or form, is something apes eat.
@@Hickalum I am sure they will if offered..Monkeys will eat practically anything and steal food from the tourists and garbage containers. Eat food that is left on plates etc.
interesting but one correcting concernng what the lady said; we did not 'evolve' with bread. our bodies as far as we know have not changed one iota since we discovered bread making. our bodies are the same as when we ate mostly animals year round with spring and summer supplements of a limited number of plants.
Please do an episode about milk pasteurization. Unpasteurized milk used in cheese is also easier to digest than pasteurized cheese.
It's not just the matter of digesion, it's the matter of healthyness, body integrity, lesser inflammation.
Recently I realised that bread and other wheat products trigger depression and mood swings in me. Anxiety too
This was a really informative post, thank you all.
My mother told me that when she was a girl in the 1920/30's. Her mother made their bread to make sure it was made of the best ingredients. At the time my mother did not appreciate it, being jealous of her classmates who were eating store bought bread. There are accounts going back in history of unscrupulous bakers using fillers like sawdust in their bread.
Sawdust is fiber. Ever seen "diatary fiber" on an ingredient list? That is straw, actual straw. Not hard to believe that fiber damages your very thin gut lining.
A spot check on some packaged bread I have bought recently from the supermarket: Preferred choice called 'Seeded Wholemeal' has Carb/Fibre per 100g: 28.0/11.0 = 2.55 2nd choice if not available, ' Multiseed Soft Wholemeal Farmhouse': 33.7/8.2 = 4.11 Trying for comparison , 'Sourdough Grains & Seeds': 46.0/3.0 = 15.33 The third one also says the manufacture has 'a passion for real Sourdough, fermented over 24 hours from a mother sour culture'. But that one has by far the worst carb/fibre ratio. Does that negate the sourdough benefits?
I think I know what your first choice is as I used to get that one too although I was put off by the high number in the "(of which sugars)" section listed under carbohydrates.......4.5g if we are talking about the same loaf. I believe this being a higher number ties in with the section "is bread empty calories?" My thinking was that say a loaf with 37.6g Carbs (only 1 of which sugars) with 7.8g fibre might be better overall despite it not coming top of the carb:fibre chart, because there was less very available sugar. Not sure if this is right - would love for some clarification from @ZOE on that.
Tim Spector’s recommended ratio for carbs : fibre in bread is not more than 5 : 1 - or else line your gut with fibre (eg from vegetables) first, before eating it, to flatten the blood sugar spike.
Wow, this was SO interesting and educational. So many questions I had, were answered. I'm definitely going to continue to bake my own bread, now armed with much more knowledge on how to do it the best way. Thank you! 💕
At least if you bake your own bread, you can control exactly what's in it and how it's made.
Bread is a vector food: It carries food you eat intentionally. Like sandwiches made of salmon or tuna filets, or fresh ground meat. I do the best I can: sprouted whole grain, organic, and thirdly sour dough. Once upon a time in the Fifties, I could buy bread made entirely from vegetables. It was black and toasted up crispy and dry.
Thanks for this interesting discussion & practical advice. I used to adore rye sourdough bread bought from a wholefoods store supplied by an artisanal baker, but reluctantly stopped eating bread at all with the suspicion I was sensitive to gluten (but certainly don’t have coeliac disease). But now I’ve learnt that my digestive problems are much more likely due to something else, I’ll joyfully try eating it again: also as a welcome change from oatcakes…
The Real Bread campaign is arguing for a legal definition of "sourdough" and better labelling of bread. As highlighted in the video there are a lot of ways manufacturers can pull the wool over our eyes. As consumers, we need this legal change so we can make the right decisions.
Technically difficult to define sourdough bread in a satisfactory way. Commercial bakers simply add a little bit of starter to yeasted breads ans call them sourdough. Only the French have tried. The definition ultimately relies on a measure of acidity - difficult to police and actually, some perfectly good sourdoughs will fail.
@@charlesbruggmann7909 it would be very easy. Sourdough should not include any yeast or other additives.
Jonathan plays 'everyman' ' very well. Good programme giving lots of information in an accessible manner.
Informative and clear discussion on bread; thank you. Message received 😊
I am diabetic type 1 and I have two Coeliac children. I found that talk very interesting, I found much to confirm we were doing things right and the sourdough information shows there is always something new to try. Thanks
So glad you enjoyed it Helen
It is possible to make and bake quality gluten free/dairy free if necessary bread, that can be healthy as a balanced product with minimized flour component by using other may be non-traditional ingredients. I am coeliac myself and bake a variety of gluten free bread types as well as other baking nutritionally dense dishes.
Hi, I am sorry to hear that you have two coeliac children and that you are type 1 diabetic. Though I don't know you at all, I strongly suggest that both you and your kids are reacting to cereal grains. There is loads of good research on this (trawl through PubMed for yourself) and it is well known (and even in the NICE guidelines on coeliac) that T1D are usually have antibodies to gluten. Trouble is most doctors and specialists do not read research. Get the whole family (your birth family too, as they have your genes) off all gluten (wheat, spelt, rye, oats and barley) from all sources, and watch their antibodies decline. A good lab for testing is Cyrex, but no NHS lab does proper testing. You have been let down. It can never be safe to give coeliacs any form of wheat whatsoever, sour or not. Doctors will let you down if you just rely on their narrow sliver of information to keep your own beloved children healthy. Get on a super low carb gluten free diet yourself, and the children too, though if they are growing still, they can tolerate a little more in the way of carbs, but they should never be carbs from cereal grains. While reducing your carb intake, keep close eye on your blood glucose and reduce your insulin proportionally, or you are at risk of a hypo. Take that seriously, T1D folk are all too often found 'dead in bed' from going hypo over night from too high a dose of insulin with dinner. Match insulin with carbs, but always lower the carbs. Best of luck.
@@afifahhamilton8843 Hi, thanks for your input. I have never felt that I was let down but I guess I was. Both kids are grown now and one follows a Keto diet, the other a low carb gluten free diet, both are active & thriving but it hasn't always been that way. It has been a constant fight to be believed and their condition recognised. One has Asperger's which clouded the issue and was only diagnosed at the age of 25, he also has M.E. We're through the worst now and he's happily married & working from home, able to eat what he needs and is a top computer programmer/ developer. The other is a caddy on the Men's European Tour (golf) he has travelled the world and has learned what and how to eat over time to optimise his energy & avoid cross contamination. As for me, I'm just starting on an insulin new to me and also a tablet to increase insulin sensitivity so we'll have to see how that suits after many years on an imperfect regime. 😉
@@helencrossan1064 Thank you for your reply. It's always nerve wracking, responding to a person on a comments thread but it matters to me that people get better info than their paid professionals provide. The simple truth about insulin is, it's main role is in handling glucose. The less glucose you eat (i.e. all carbs, including legumes for example, as well as obvious carbs like grains, fruit and sugar) the less insulin you will need. It really is a simple system. Insulin deals with the carbs. The less carbs eaten, the less insulin is needed. The danger for T1D is excess insulin. Excess insulin can do harm in a short time frame, whereas excess insulin or excess carbs does harm slowly, over months and years. So once you are on a low carb/low insulin regime you will be in a far better position to manage the small movement and needs of both and no gross mistakes will be made. It is a dreadful situation, across the world, that this clear simple way of looking at the physiology is not taught, but rather the waters are muddied such that nobody knows what they are doing, and people are woefully harmed in the process, and no-one takes responsibility. I reckon there is just too much money to be made by drugs, and not by eating real food, and the money spinning system wins out. Don't let it feed off YOU though! Well done your sons. They have got things right, after, presumably, years of difficulty. Very testing I am sure! Let's hope the next decades see you all really doing well. Best wishes to you all.
I have not managed to find one ready-baked, genuine sourdough in the UK that's wholegrain and has the fibre/sugar ratio recommended in this show. I'm convinced this podcast is actually advising us to read labels for something that doesn't exist! I've switched to Jasons Sourdough Superb Sprouted Grains, whch has more fibre than the sourdough I used to buy (5.2g), but it's still not great. If anyone knows of a baker that makes a genuine wholegrain sourdough, please let me know! (I don't have the patience/inclination to make my own sourdough!)
ask Paul's of Melton Mowbray about their Pain de Compagne (probably spelt wrong!) . it's sourdough and organic
They're not sourdough varieties but just having had a little look online at what the UK supermarkets have to offer, I've found 2 loaves with the suggested ratio of fibre to carbs, both from Sainsburys and both wholemeal. Sainsburys own organic wholemeal bread and Vogels seeded wholemeal bread which is the highest fibre I can find so far in total! Will definitely be trying these next! 😁 Bon appetit everyone!
Gail's is a chain bakery and sells very good Sourdough bread.
Just discovered this video. Started baking my own sourdough 10 years ago. Little KZhead videos at that time. Learned along the way with the help of some professional sourdough bakers. Only using organic flour, with my own blend of whole-wheat, white, spelt and semolina. Occasionally blending other type of grains to change taste. I also blend 2 type of starter that I have been maintaining for the past 10 years (whole-wheat and white). I tend to use flour with highest protein and fiber content I can find. Never going back to any commercial bread. And yes, only flour, water, salt and tiny quantity of EVO oil I use as I’m extremely lazy with the process of knitting: time for fermenting and folding more important than knitting to get fluffy full of bubbles super tasty and healthy bread as our ancestors likely baked.
Isn't safer to get rid of All breads all together??????????????
So if I understood correctly, the bacteria is dead in sour dough after cooking but the fermentation process has altered the protein structure and release micronutrients?
👍
One type of bread hardly ever mentioned by the nutritionists is an ordinary loaf made at home in a machine. This is the only kind I eat except when on holiday (when I miss it very much). I buy organic flour in either 8 or 16Kg sacks, mostly grown in the UK and milled locally, which is realtively cheap. I mix up wholemeal, rye and strong white in random proportions. Then just a little salt, quick yeast, olive oil, seeds and water. I love sourdough too but don't have time to make it and the shop bought stuff is either far too expensive or not the proper thing. The point is that home made bread is not only superb tasting and always fresh but really cheap. Flinging the ingredients in and switching on takes about 60 seconds. No need to weigh anything, no mess to clear up. Set it on a timer over night to be ready for breakfast. After this, factory bread is tasteless, expensive and probably bad for you. The machine by the way pays for itself very quickly.
I do sourdough with a machine, once I found out how it is just one minute extra compared to normal machine bread. So I am surprised you don't find the time :)
@@2adamast Perhaps you can point me to a recipe then, with exact instructions on machine-made SD??
@@aerowez Sourdough is a low yeast dough, it's like making machine bread with 0.5gr of yeast. Therefore, I use the program with the longest rise time, add to that I premix when starting, that's a few minutes of the pizza program followed by the delayed long rise program for a total of 8-13 hours. Adding some extra yeast when trying the first times is a good idea but yeast is replaced by the starter. The starter is for me 20% old starter, 40 gr whole rye, 80gr water and 3 gr of sugar, going directly in the fridge until next bread. Starter together with ingredients is the usual amounts. To start a starter some yeast dough and yogurt
@@2adamast OK thanks I'll give it a try
I rarely eat bread. When I do, my first step is to grind the flour. I generaly make it in a machine, and the grain I use is usually Kamut.
I got from the video that if we should buy shop bread that we should chose bread with a high fibre to carb ratio. But with sourdough, the video left me confused. There doesn’t seem any way to know if sourdough we buy in store a genuine or not ?
Yes,bread is healthy. I've eaten home cooked bread from home produced and milled wheat and was never overweight. The moment I started eating bread sold at supermarkets my body was not healthy and I gained weight. So please don't eat refined flour and avoid it at all cost. Eat whole grain,home milled and baked/cooked bread where no additives are in it except water or ground seeds,nuts.
Dipping buttered bread in tomato soup is so yummy..
this is great for me as i was one of those confused consumers at one point that had a severe reaction to something i was eating and was advised to drop any gluten or wheat containing foods from my diet which did eliminate my symptoms but left me feeling scared of those sneaky foods and missing pizza lol. quality matters more than anything else about food
This is a message Tim spoke about recently on the podcast with Steven ... it was brilliant. - Quality is what matters.
Minute 3: Vanessa, bless her for she does do good work in the field of bread making, says there should be live bacteria in sourdough bread “if it’s made correctly.” Which is nonsense. The good bacteria have done their magic on the flour while the bread was rising. They die long before the bread reaches its top temperature in the oven.
In Canada, look for "yeast". If yeast appears in ingredients, it's sourfaux - not sourdough
Look out for "sourdough" which also has yeast in the ingredients list - they add some starter but use the yeast to do the raising rather than waiting for a long fermentation so it's really not the sourdough process.
Great tip! Thanks
you can make long fermented sourdough with added yeast actually, at home. sometimes if you starter is in bad shape but you want to know the bread will rise you can add a pinch and still ferment it overnight
@@ekcs3941I have been doing this as my attempts at sourdough so far taste nice but aren't rising enough😢. My husband is my Guinea pig 😂.
Just enjoying a slice of my home-baked wholemeal loaf toasted for my breakfast when this video popped up👍🏼
Wonderful! What a great combination :)
Same! Shipton Mill Three Malts and Sunflower for me, topped with cinnamon, almond and hazelnut butter (one slice) and homemade marmalade on the other slice for breakfast dessert.
More info on nice quality homemade bread vs supermarket would be nice. I am struggling to keep the sourdough up these days! If I make an overnight slow fermented low yeast bread with added whole grain is this still better than shop bread? Not everyone has time for sourdough, trust me and I am a sourdough enthusiast!
How do you choose flour for making bread at home in a bread maker. There is so much choice!
What a high quality podcast and video - thank you, thank you. Really insightful - I'm now hugely more informed and able to make sensible choices. Three highly knowledgeable and expert communicators who scythed through all the propaganda the bakery industry has been giving us. Love the simple tricks - look for whole grain, high fibre and the lowest carb to fibre ratio. Now have a look at the supermarket websites and see how their product wording has been misleading us.
Not really … The answer to the question ‘Can Bread Ever be Healthy?’ … is No … Apes don’t eat grains. If you do you will be ill, one way or another.
so pleased you enjoyed the episode Daytona
Thank you
I feel that there is a demand for a follow-up to this, I enjoy these types of video & am fine with scientific content as I'm educated to Postgraduate level but I wonder if you've considered how to get the message to people that might find this challenging in terms of biological understanding, socio-economic issues, potentially feeling that they are failing their families? The lecture & enthusiastic expert approach with a few Q & A's is OK but why not try a small group of non-graduates & see what works for them - or ask them? If statements are made with respect to health outcomes I would find it interesting to have those signposted as Dr John Campbell does in his videos. Keep up the good work, & thanks.
Illuminating as always! Thank you
Great conversation again. I knew somethings but you have added to my confidence.
I made a very nice bread out of seeds. No flour needed. It's delicious 😋
Can you share your recipe please? That sounds delicious 😋
recipe, please
Brilliant podcast! You are changing the way I eat. Thank you!
Mama said bicuits and cornbread will stick to your ribs. You won't be craving stuff.
The day the neighborhood bakery disappeared and was replaced by supermarket bread marketed by very unhealthy looking corporate executives is the day humans began destroying public health. I worked for a while distributing wheat grain (berries) to nomads suffering from drought and unable to glean grain for their daily bread. This berry went to the neighboorhood miller and ground whole into a flour, which then was sold in the market and most went to small bakers who baked a bread by slapping it to the walls of mud/stone ovens in the ground. This flat bread tasted good, different, the entire berry was milled and used. I think the world should get rid of these bread factories in the West and replace them with several neighborhood bakeries that produce bread as that which I saw and tasted in places around the world where baking bread is still a neighborhood activity.
I have been making a sourdough bread with 25% Whole Wheat and one with 35% whole rye ( pumpernickel) using a wild yeast starter since the beginning of 2020 just before the pandemic. There is a culture war in my house between convenience bread ( garbage store purchases) and my long fermented overnight retarded crusty sourdoughs. I soften my sourdough breads by using whole milk for 1/2 the hydration content and adding a teaspoon of EVOO as well. This video has confirmed to me that i am on the right path and quest for the most nutritious meals i can provide for myself and others. My goal is to purchase a countertop mill to make whole grain Einkorn bread. Thank you so very much.
I have had random patches of skin irritation (mostly around facial hair) for years, it's sporadic but always 'there'. It starts to go away when I stop eating gluten, and the longer I don't eat gluten the worse I feel (anxiety and depression symptoms). So it's clearly more than just giving up any other kind of food. So, I've often wondered if gluten is doing something untoward in my gut, because these symptoms are repeatable time and time again. Even if I only eat decent quality bread with none of the 'crap' or seed oils in it, just once a day. I'm not for or against gluten, just observing my own reaction to it.
@Nader's salad whiskey Who is 'they'? I'm more than capable of deciding what I'm for and against. Gluten has been human food for millenia, just as beer and sugar is. It's the amount and variety that we consume of such things that is the issue. The only one making an issue out of it here is you. If I drank too much beer, would also be an issue. If I ate too much sugar, also an issue.
Soak, sprout, grind, ferment, bake/cook.
Thank you for this video, which speaks out about the unbelievably poor quality of bread in supermarkets and even some local bakeries. With the rising popularity of ‘sourdough’ bread it’s increasingly impossible to find wholegrain sourdough bread. This is appalling given that wholegrain is healthier than white flour. I had to pay £3.75 for a white ‘sourdough’ loaf recently at my local bakery and I don’t even know how long it’s been fermented. I used to make my own rye and wholewheat sourdough loaves and will be getting back to home bread baking. It would be great to have sourdough classes guided by nutrition, eg sourcing of specialist flours.
Where is the discussion on glyphosate and the pesticides that are sprayed on the seeds/wheat etc.
I have used a Continuous Glucose meter- like Jonathan-and was totally blown by the very steep increase in blood sugar and just after consuming flour in the form of rotis- flat bread. I immediately exchanged wheat for millets. Big differences. No spikes. The first millet was sorghum. There are many more millets showing slow digestion characterists. Great programme Jonathan. Thank you.
Any sorghum bread recipes available?
@@mrssibelius The KZhead has lots of methodologies. Stay with the western ones. The recipies fron Indian cooking are deceptably simple and do need a lot of kneeding. I have been making pourable versions. Cooking the grains like rice is simple and tasty. I will try rye sourdough bread and measure its impact in blood sugar readings. Thanks for your input guys. Great programme.
Still no idea what Sourdough is or what I should buy/avoid in the supermarket. And I won't be putting my mother in the fridge.
Sourdough bread is made with a sourdough starter. It is fermented flour and water usually kept in a jar that you feed every day or every couple of days. The feeding process entails adding flour and water and discarding some of it so you don't end up with a huge amount of starter. Or using some of it. People sometimes refer to the starter as the mother. There's an entire (somewhat pretentious) jargon that has grown up around sourdough. It's not surprising, every interest group develops its own special terminology. Unfortunately that same jargon excludes others who aren't in the know. What you should avoid in the supermarket is processed bread and processed food in general. If the bread comes in a plastic bag, it's processed. Try to find sourdough bread that is made by a person or bakery that takes pride in making a healthier product. This is very difficult to find and extremely uncommon. For that reason most people who want to eat bread but also want to be healthy, end up learning about sourdough and baking in general in order to be able to bake bread themselves. That learning process can be fun and provide community but it's definitely a process. If you have time, even with the barriers to entry it's worth doing. There are some good books and guides out there that explain the process clearly and are more friendly to beginners. I don't have a sourdough starter. I was going to start one but never did because I try to avoid eating lots of carbohydrates in general. I love to bake though and good sourdough bread is incredible. A good loaf of sourdough bread has as much in common with supermarket bread as a fast food burger has with a filet mignon. If you have any questions or want anything clarified, I'm happy to help.
In my opinion sour dough as a practical alternative to buying bread is not the answer for most people. If you don’t eat much bread, so it’s high price from an artisan local baker is not an issue, buying it probably is the answer. It keeps well, can be sliced and frozen etc. The problems are, wet starters waste a lot of flour in the discards, you need to be baking a lot of bread, the process is long so does not fit into my life style. My need for bread varies a lot with time of year, because I eat seasonal produce, maintaining a starter becomes a challenge, cooking times are longer for sourdough so energy cost is high, so not so good for the planet.
So basically bread is bad unless you bake your own
I wouldn’t say that. If you’re making your own bread out of white flour, that’s not quite healthy. it’s more important what goes into it than the process with which it’s made
No mention was made of the apparent bleaching of glutenous grains which may just be the source of discomfort when eating bread.
Bread was an easy inexpensive way to use wheat, which is able to be grown almost anywhere, to feed people that would otherwise starve in centuries past. It can be made less harmful when made correctly but is still an imperfect food. Everyone loves some kind of bread but it’s really not great food.
Made my starter in first lockdown and still going strong. Never added sugar to my bread as some recipes suggested, just flour, water, salt and olive oil. Love making bread.
No need for oil whatsoever. Dip it in oil afterward, maybe? Yum.
No sugar
@@eugeniebreida1583 No oil needed. I add oil to my normal wholemeal loaf with instant yeast but never add it to my sourdough.
@@veronicamcleroy5772 No.
As all the specialist sourdough bakers where I live, don't produce pure wholegrain sourdough, but produce sourdoughs with mixes of white and wholegrain flour, varying from 50/50 to about 83/17 wholegrain/white and as I think this is generally the same elsewhere, it would have been good to have been given some guidance on whether or not this is still healthy and at what sort of proportions if any this is still a healthy bread to eat?
It’s really difficult to make nice 100% wholemeal bread. Personally If I can make a good loaf with 25% wholemeal I would be very happy.
Even the finest organic wheat berries loose their nutritional value very quickly after being ground into flour. We’re talking a few hours, not the weeks, months, or even years that commercial flours sit on grocery shelves. There are several affordable ways to grind your own flour at home for immediate use, enabling full access to all that good nutrition. I use a German engineered Mockmill, but there are other good options too. I make sourdough bread using the entire wheat berry and always choose organic. My sourdough bread contains freshly ground flour, water, and salt. If you bake the bread, cool it, then slice and freeze it, the glycemic index is even lower. My sourdough starter was made completely in my own kitchen… no commercial starters needed.
Does using a bread maker alter the nutritional values? I’m thinking of cutting out all (or as close to all) shop brought bread and making sour dough but I’m a teacher and have very little time so a bread make might be ideal? Any advice out there?
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="2040">34:00</a>+ What Tim says about sourdough starters differing because of local bacteria - including those on a bakers hands - makes me wonder about the effect of using modern antimicrobial cleaning fluids 🤔. What might be a good alternative, if I want to preserve my local good bacteria for making sourdough?
I think the airborne bacteria should be enough to get into your starter, and once it's there, you are golden. It will breed along with yeast. You want to be careful. My starter got contaminated with a pathogen, and I had to bin it. Lucky for me, it stank so it was obvious.
Plain soap and water for your hands. (Only when logical, no obsessive soaping up, eh ; ) As we know, for. example, covid is an airborne virus = nostrils, unless talking/gasping)
@@eugeniebreida1583 I am not sure how you wash your hands will affect your starter. While of course I handle the bread dough with my hands, the starter is too runny for that. I use a spoon to measure and mix, so any bacteria on my hands will stay there, unless I inadvertently contaminate it.
🤔 I refuse to keep my mother in the fridge! 😂😂
I keep my mother in the fridge when I go on vacation. She still is alive when I get back so I take her out and feed her till she is really active again!
Most informative... it's a shame that baker shops are hard to find...
Good shows. My wife and I are in our mid 90s and we follow the rules-good sleep, good diet, and we make sure we move and exercise. We have no stress and we take care of our large property, finances, house keeping, etc. Our level of exercise and stamina are much lower than they were but we still move and work out every day. When we visit the doctor for scheduled visits our numbers have been good. We are completely independent. We feel blessed. Doug
I've just ordered Vanessa's book, 10 Minute Sourdough' I rarely use my mother, which sits in my fridge, but I shall certainly be getting it out tonight when I get in from work.
If an individual doesn't already speak the lingo of sourdough bread they won't understand your comment. Someone above stated that he won't be putting his mother in the fridge. I clarified for him, explaining that a sourdough starter is sometimes referred to as the mother. It's worth paying attention to, to avoid excluding people who are not already in the know.