Tasty and wholesome — perhaps not a combination as popular as white-bread-and-butter, but certainly a goal well worth pursuing in the larger interests of a healthy society.
A group of scientists in the UK wants to have its bread and eat it too. White bread, that is. Using wheat that retains some of its bran and germ, along with other grains like quinoa, teff, sorghum and millet, the research project is in the process of developing loaves that look and taste like white bread, but are as nutritious as wholemeal bread. Tasty and wholesome — perhaps not a combination as popular as white-bread-and-butter, but certainly a goal well worth pursuing in the larger interests of a healthy society.
Yet, like so many other kinds of food, white bread has been unfairly demonised. For example, the once-trendy “no-white” diet specifically prohibits the consumption of white bread, along with other foods, like white rice, sugar, and white potatoes. The rationale offered is that, devoid of nutrients like essential vitamins and fibre, all that such foods offer is “pure carbs”, an oversimplification that fails to account for the fact that a truly healthy diet relies on a diversity of nutritional sources, rather than abjuration of a whole class of foods. Such an approach also flattens the complex social and economic history of food.
Take white bread, for example: Long reserved for the elites of bread-eating societies — because of the labour-intensive process of separating the grain’s endosperm from the bran and germ — the Industrial Revolution and mechanisation of agriculture made it one of the cheapest, most accessible — and easily digestible — sources of nutrition. And, again, no small matter: The appearance of packaged white bread in grocery store aisles helped liberate women from the daily chore of baking bread. No doubt today’s whole wheat bread is delicious, with its deep, earthy flavours, but before the invention of modern leavening agents and reliable electric ovens, the coarse bread eaten by most was just that — coarse. Whether the slice one enjoys at breakfast is white or brown, the key to a healthy diet is not romanticisation of the past but moderation.
