Bread: The Ugly Truth about Preservatives

We will define preservatives as non-food substances such as refined salt, refined sugar, white flour, dyes and chemicals that are frequently added to foods. Prepared foods, restaurant food, canned foods, boxed and packaged foods and bottled or canned drinks contain preservatives. Even restaurant lettuce is sprayed with a preservative for shelf life. I won't belabor the point: these are not living foods and should not be ingested for any reason. They cause chemical build-up in your body which will exhibit itself eventually as allergies, cancer, auto-immune disease or just basic inflammation.

But there is one preservative that is particularly difficult to remove from your diet - wheat.

The whole grain kernel of wheat consists of 3 parts: the outer Bran which contains B vitamins, fiber and minerals; the Germ which is a small nucleus containing rich anti-oxidants, vitamin E and B; and the inner core called Endosperm which is the large carbohydrate containing protein. In white and wheat flour products the whole grain kernels are husked of their Germ and Bran and contain only the starch portion of the kernel. The resulting flour is mixed with sugar, salt, oil, yeast and any other combination of things and cooked.

The following is a ridiculously small list of the vast number of foods that contain flour: pasta, bread, pancakes, sandwich bread, croutons, cookies, cakes, pastry crust, flour tortillas, pizza crust and bagels. These foods and all their cousins are possibly the greatest sources of fat and, ironically, malnutrition in the Standard American Diet. As you can tell, it is almost impossible to eat breakfast, lunch or dinner in a restaurant and avoid bread/flour.

"Standard white flour is purely endosperm, with most of
the bran and germ removed."
Get Healthy
Gary Null

You may say, "Oh, but I eat only high fiber sandwich bread and whole wheat pasta." Take a look at the package. Ask yourself, did this product come from "amber waves of grain"? Is this a whole food? Or is it a stripped down carbohydrate mixed with sugar, salt and fat that has been cooked until soft that becomes a dead lump in my gut?

Due to lax packaging and advertising laws, many white flour products can proclaim to be "100% whole grain". Learn to read ingredients: the highest volume ingredient is listed first, the second highest volume ingredient second and so on.

"I recommend avoiding one food - wheat - simply because
it is so high in gluten, and because most people use too much of it. The
average American diet is 29% wheat - mostly refined wheat products, low in food
value. Gluten can damage the intestinal villi, causing celiac disease,
which causes malabsorption (and sometimes bleeding) in the bowel, and results in
calcium deficiency. The only know cure is to avoid gluten-containing
products, including all wheat products."
Foods That Heal
Dr. Bernard Jensen