healthy bread

The True Advantages of Eating Bread on my Eat Bread 90 diet.
 by Lin Carson

Week 13: The True Advantages of Eating Bread

90 days later, and round two of my bread diet experiment is over. I’ve documented the many advantages of eating bread and now I have the end result: 8 pounds lost on a bread diet.

Although I’d like to attribute my weight loss to bread alone, these are the contributing factors as well:

  • Reduced calorie intake
  • Reduced exercise, but still daily
  • Reduced variety in food choices

When I started this project, I wasn’t worried about my high-carb diet. But I knew to lose weight would take some extra planning. Here are a few of my biggest takeaways from 90 days of bread.

What are the advantages of eating bread?

Eating bread means:

  • Getting essential nutrients from whole grains, such as fiber, iron, magnesium, and folic acid
  • Giving your body needed energy in the form of carbohydrates
  • Eating a nutrient-dense food that satisfies cravings and is easy to incorporate in your diet.

Say what you will about diets that cut out carbs, like paleo or keto. The truth is, we need carbohydrates in our diets. And research is showing that U.S. adults are deficient in a number of important nutrients that are best made up via eating bread products.

Plus, it’s a relatively cheap, accessible food that carries real substance.

Is eating bread every day bad for you?

No, unless you have celiac disease. Eating bread every day not only gives you the benefits of whole grains, but provides the carbohydrates active people need to function.

  • Bread is healthy for you and has a place in any diet.
  • You won’t gain extra weight if you’re watching your overall calorie input/output.
  • You won’t develop a gluten intolerance.
  • You won’t feel bloated or sluggish.

Is bread the reason I lost weight?

It’s a big part of it. It helped fight cravings for one thing. Bread also helped limit the variety of my diet. Studies are revealing that too much variety in our diet can lead to weight gain.

To lose weight I also had to carefully watch my calorie intake, and exercised regularly. However, as I found out with exercise, less is more. By doing some physical activity for just 30 minutes a day, I found I burned the needed calories, but still had energy for staying active the rest of the day and didn’t feel the need to load up on food afterwards.

Can I make a bread diet work for me?

Absolutely! If this experiment has proved anything, it’s that you don’t need to cut carbs from your diet, especially to lose weight. Stay away from complicated fad diets that don’t work and give your body the food it needs.

The key is to do what works for you and your schedule. Eat healthy foods. Watch your calorie intake. Exercise. And enjoy bread!

If you’re looking for some delicious, healthy loaves to try, check out my bread gallery.

The final weigh in:

My weight at the start of the 90 days.

The first weigh-in: 147.4

 

Week 13 final weigh in for Eat Bread 90: 139.4 lbs. Brought to you be the advantages of eating bread.

Week 13 final weigh in: 139.4 lbs. Brought to you by the advantages of eating bread.

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Is bread really the main reason behind my weight loss?
 by Lin Carson

Week 12: You Might Not Like What I’m About to Say About Weight Loss

Is bread really the main reason for my weight  loss? No. I truly believe that by incorporating bread into my diet, it replaces a lot of the calories from the other foods I usually consume, leaving me with little room for anything else. Therefore, I’m restricting my variety of food intake drastically.

In this study, the potential downsides of diet diversity results in having too many choices and leads to higher consumption of food—and consequently, more calories.

In another review, The American Heart Association reported that overweight people who were offered a variety of foods for their snacks ate 25% more snack servings per week than people who were told they could eat any amount of one favorite snack. The same goes for meals—having more variety of dishes on the table can lead to overconsumption.

So, I believe my ability to lose weight on this diet is mainly because I cut off my variety of food from other sources—especially sources that are high in fat and sugar, which are unhealthy. I focused on only eating whole grain bread as my main source of calories, and with that, came the benefits of a diet that was high in nutrition.

But isn’t this an experiment to show that bread helps with weight loss?

My use of the Eat Bread 90 experiment this time around was to show that you can use bread as part of a weight loss diet plan that works with exercise. I have a problem with all the low-carb and keto diets these days because I know that our body need carbs to function. I believe I have personally been effective in losing weight by not following those diet trends, and by sticking to the a restrictive diet plan focused around bread consumption. This affirms again that bread alone doesn’t make you gain weight.

Can I try this?

Yes. I want you to try out this bread diet. Grab that bag of sliced whole grain bread and follow the diet plan laid out in the first few weeks of my blog. You will see that your appetite and cravings will decrease, and so will your caloric consumption. Don’t forget to visit my bread gallery to look at the different varieties of bread!

Lastly, remember, if you can eat it, you can run it off (or exercise). A diet plan without exercise is a half baked idea!

My weight at the start of the 90 days.

The first weigh-in: 147.4

 

Week 12 weigh in for Eat Bread 90: 140 lbs.

Week 12 weigh in: 140 lbs.

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no bread
 by Katie Jones

Caution: May Contain White Bread

There is nothing quite like the soft, squishy texture of commercial white bread. These days your friends would call the food police if they found a loaf of brightly packaged white bread sitting on your kitchen counter. “Sally, step away from the loaf and put your butter knife down!”

White bread ranks highest of all the evils of bread consumption for being unhealthy.

But did you know you can still enjoy the doughy goodness of white bread with better nutritional value?

Not all white bread is created equal. If you want the best version, check the ingredient label for white whole wheat flour. The basis of good bread is flour. White whole wheat flour is not a bleached version of whole wheat flour; i.e., it is not the same as the white refined flour that many are trying to avoid. It is a flour made from grinding the entire hard white wheat kernel. You get all the fiber, vitamins and nutrients of the whole grain.

Let’s look at a nutritional comparison of three types of flour:

Flour Calories Fat Carbs Fiber Sugars Protein Iron Magnesium Phosphorus Enriched
Whole wheat 140 1g 27g 5g 1g 7g 10% 15% 15%
White whole wheat 130 0.5g 27g 9g 0g 4g 8% 10% 10%
Enriched white 100 0g 22g <1g <1g 3g 6% 10%/ 6%/ 8%/ 10%

Serving size is ¼ cup of flour.

From the table we can see that, nutritionally speaking, none of these flours is high in fat or sugar. I was surprised to see that the white whole wheat has a slightly higher fiber content than the other two. The enriched flour started as a red wheat berry that was milled and refined, removing the bran and germ. We started milling the flour this way to achieve a finer-texture grain and to improve the shelf life of the flour.

You have probably noticed that whole grain bread has a coarser texture than billowy white bread. Unfortunately, all of this processing removes fiber, iron, and B vitamins, which are then added back as thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, and folic acid. Many health issues point to refined white flour as the culprit. Its ease of digestibility due to lack of fiber is also to blame for blood sugar spikes.

Bakers are always innovating ways to keep bread in vogue. More whole grain breads line the supermarket shelves with seeds, nuts, and ancient grains. For those of us who just really loved white bread but were told to consume it with caution in order to stay thin and healthy, white whole wheat may be the answer.

Now we can choose the latest trend in the whole grain bread aisle — white whole grain bread!

If you want to learn more about whole grains, refined grains and healthy diet choices, check out choosemyplate.gov.

To read about baking with whole wheat flour, enriched flour, or white whole wheat flour, head over to BAKERpedia for all things baking-related.

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basket of bread diet important
 by Lin Carson

Is it Important to Eat Bread in Your Diet? Day 78 and 79

I’ve heard that over and over again from people who are trying to lose weight. It is really misleading when someone says that the simple act of cutting bread out of your diet will magically make you lose weight. The immediate follow-up statement usually goes like this: “carbs are bad for you.”

Carbs are not bad for you. Based on a 2,000 caloric intake, a daily intake of 300g worth of carbohydrates is recommended. Everyone should at least eat 120 – 130g each day to meet the minimum required for your brain to function. In bread talk, that’s about 3 slices of bread a day.

It’s true, if you cut something out from your diet, you will lose weight because your daily habits surrounding that food changes and your consumption becomes more limited. This can be applied universally to all types of food, not just bread.

Why keep bread part of your diet?

Bread should be part of everyone’s diet because it is a conveniently nutritious product. If you followed my journey, you would have noticed that I consumed bread that is healthy and easily obtained off the supermarket shelve. You do not need to make these breads yourselves, nor do you have to specially order it.

Why are you eating a loaf? What are you trying to prove?

If this journey said, “I’m eating 3 slices of bread a day, and bread is not killing me” would you believe me? But I ate a pound of bread a day, 12-14 slices, and still, it hasn’t done anything bad to me or my weight. Now do you believe me that bread is not bad for you?

How do you eat so much bread in one day?

I’ve pretty much spaced out my bread eating all throughout the day. Anyone in our office will tell you that I’m stuffing my face with bread all the time. My children will tell you that all I eat is bread at the dinner table. If the clock is ticking, and I’m not in bed, I’m eating bread.

Don’t you get sick of eating so much bread?

Never been and never will. My critics, or the Bread Police (they seem to be hanging around in the office) keep asking me that question in hopes of seeing a white flag. I think the answer is pretty simple. I’ll never get sick of something I love eating. I’ve been loving this journey, and will continue to love eating bread, even after 90 days.

bread diet important

My days worth of delicious rolls with a beet salad.

Here’s what I ate on Days 78 and 79 of EB90:

Food Portion Calories
Day 78
Bagel 2 (100g) 420
Fritatta Croisant 80g 300
Purple Wheat Raisin 5 slices (39g) 400
Ravioli and Sausage 1 C 300
Canale 200
Steamed Brocolli 1C 30
Orange 1 orange 45
Total 1695
Day 79
Bun Rolls 1lb 1200
Beet Salad 2C 250
Croissant 240
Pork Watercress Noodles 1C 200
Marie Biscuits 5 100
Cherries 1C 74
Run -200
 Total 1864

 

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whole grain bread
 by Lin Carson

Did You Know You Can Get Probiotic Bread? Days 75, 76 and 77   

You heard that right. I’m not kidding. I ate probiotic bread was bursting with benefits – True Grains® Seed’licious, Purple Wheat Raisin and Honey Wheat. How can bread have probiotic benefits if all the good bacteria are killed in the baking process? Well, the True Grains® line of product from Orlando Baking Co. uses a patented strain of probiotics that are resistant to high heat in the baking process. And no, it’s not GMO either.

probiotic bread

 

How do we know that the probiotics are working in the bread? Meredith answers this tough question here.

Probiotic Bread and More

True Grains® Purple Wheat Raisin, made with Purple Wheat that’s high in antioxidants and stops your glycemic index from spiking, was my favorite. If by now you haven’t figured out my weakness for fruity bread, you haven’t been following me very well. I really enjoy eating something so special and nutritious, and I’m very happy to see this particular innovation from Orlando Baking Co.

Beneficial bacteria are known as probiotics and found in foods such as yogurts, kim chee, sauerkraut, and kefir. The most common probiotic strains added to foods belong to several species of Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium.1

Probiotics are thought to prevent or treat a variety of health problems such as digestive disorders, colic in infants, periodontal disease, and even the common cold.1

probiotic bread

The popularity of baked goods makes them the perfect vehicle to deliver probiotics to consumers. However, there are some challenges. During the baking process changes in pH, activity in water, ethanol production, Maillard reaction products and high temperatures are a challenge to the survival of probiotics. Microencapsulation is the only way to overcome this and produce probiotic bread. It is a coating technology that protects sensitive compounds or living cells during the entire food processing operation, including storage.

One study looked at application of encapsulated L. acidophilus on the surface of par baked bread loaves.  It was found that the shorter baking time and temperatures used for par baked bread allowed greater survival of  L. acidophilus while maintaining the desirable sensory characteristics of the baked bread.

probiotic

Bread has the potential to provide both prebiotic and probiotic benefits. Once again proving that bread is the ultimate functional food!

 

  1. Hibberd, P. L., Phd, Linda Duffy, Phd, and David Shurtlef, Phd. “Probiotics: In Depth.” National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 16 Jan. 2017. https://nccih.nih.gov/health/probiotics/introduction.htm#hed3. Accessed 19 June 2017.

Here’s what I ate on Days 75, 76 and 77 of EB90:

Food  Portion   Calories
Day 75 
Seed’licious Probiotic Bread 4 slices (39g) 280
Purple Wheat Raisin Probiotic Bread 2 slices (39g) 160
Honey Wheat Probiotic Bread 2 slices (39g) 160
Buckwheat w/ Cherry 50g 100
Rye Sourdough 50g 100
Pumpkin Seed Currant 50g 100
Butter 2 Tbsp 200
Smoked Ham 4 Slices 60
Swiss Cheese 1 Slice 106
Lemon Curd 2 Tbsp 120
Ricotta Cheese 1/4 C 100
Tamale 1 pc 200
Cherries 1 C 74
Kale (cooked) 1 C 33
 Total 1793
Day 76
Seed’licious 4 slices (39g) 280
Purple Wheat Raisin 4 slices (39g) 320
Honey Wheat 4 slices (39g) 320
Hash browns, sausage and eggs 1C 400
Butter 2 Tbsp 200
Strawberries 1C 50
Pineapple 3 oz 41
Lemon Curd 2 Tbsp 120
POG Juice 2 C 200
Terriyaki 3 oz 250
Roasted Pork 1 oz 100
Rice 1/2C 50
 Total 2331
Day 77
Seed’licious 4 slices (39g) 280
Purple Wheat Raisin 4 slices (39g) 320
Honey Wheat 4 slices (39g) 320
Butter 2 Tbsp 200
Nutella 2 tbsp 200
Breakfast Burrito 1 200
Butternut Squash Soup 150
Edamame 50
Steak 200
Asparagus & Portabello 150
Corb on Cob 100
 Total 2170

 

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eat bread 90-Q&A
 by Katie Jones

Bread Q&A: What Kind of Bread is Good for You & Other Questions

For a food as simple as bread, there are lots of questions about it! What kind of bread should I eat? How many kinds are there? Who came up with that whole sliced bread thing? Here are a few answers:

 

What kind of bread is good for you?

The key with picking out a healthy loaf is the ingredients. If the label says it has whole grains and seeds, then you are getting the most vitamins, minerals, fiber and protein that can be packed into bread. There are also breads that have lower amounts of sugar. However, generally speaking, bread won’t hurt you!

 

Will eating a loaf of bread a day for 90 days make me fat?

Maybe, it depends on what you are sandwiching between the slices.  Are you slathering gobs of Nutella on every slice? Or buttering each slice? Or eating 8 tuna fish sandwiches every day? Or spending your days munching on peanut butter and banana sandwiches?  Or crafting super cheesy grilled cheese sandwiches? The kind of bread influences some things as well.

 

How many types of bread are there?

There are endless varieties of bread. New forms of yeasty deliciousness are dreamed up by bakers all the time. Grocery stores typically have over 50 different varieties of bread on their shelves at all times.  And that doesn’t include in-store bakeries.

 

What proves that bread is a staple of our diet?

Because of all the common expressions that involve bread.  When we are not eating it, we are talking about it.  Think about how many sayings have risen out of our obsession. No matter how you slice it…breadwinner…bread as another word for money…asking which side is your bread buttered on…and the list goes on.

 

How long has bread been around?

Bread has been around since the Egyptians invented a grinding stone to crush wheat into flour. Historians believe that the idea of combining yeast with the flour and other ingredients happened accidentally when a pot of hot wheat cereal was left over night and yeast naturally developed.

 

When did bread start rising in popularity?

Bread got its lucky break with the invention of the sandwich in the mid 1700s when John Montagu, the Fourth Earl of Sandwich, summoned his chef to put his steak between two slabs of bread so he only needed one hand to eat his dinner so he could keep playing cards and gambling with his friends.

 

Who invented sliced bread?

Sliced bread has probably been around since it was first baked in loaves.  An official bread slicing machine was invented in 1912 in Iowa. And it took about 15 years after that in Missouri to set up the first production line for bread that included baking uniform sized loaves, slicing them, and bagging them for easy transporting and sales.

 

What do the colored tags mean?

Bread is delivered to grocery stores five days a week and the plastic tags are color coded by the day the bread was baked. The colors are alphabetized to correspond with the days of the week, so Monday is Blue, Tuesday is Green, Thursday is Red, Friday is White, and Saturday is Yellow. Now you know what to look for when you want to buy the freshest bread at the store.

 kind of bread, variety, bread diet, loaves,

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