The bread in my fridge is the furthest thing from Wonder Bread. Each slice is made with organic whole wheat flour and contains 4 grams of fiber and only 2 grams of sugar. There are so many seeds in them that I’m always worried about them getting stuck in my teeth. The only service this bread can serve is as a hummus sandwich. It tastes too healthy for grilled cheese, egg sandwiches, and other hand-held dishes.
But here’s my problem with whole wheat seeded bread. Apparently, it counts as an ultra-processed food, just like Twinkies, colas, and sugary cereals. I was faced with this bread conundrum earlier this month when I tried to end my bread intake and reduce my intake of ultra-processed foods. I hear a lot about their harm.. Almost all foods are processed in some way. Milk is conventionally pasteurized. While tomatoes are canned, ultra-processed foods (UPFs) are typically manufactured in factories using industrial ingredients such as emulsifiers and artificial flavors. And they seem to be making us sick. In a recent review,convincing evidence” state that consumption of ultra-processed foods is associated with type 2 diabetes and fatal heart disease.
According to a rubric created by Brazilian epidemiologist Carlos Monteiro: ultra-processed foodsmy bread should have been avoided. It was mass-produced, laced with industrial additives, and sliced. Mr. Monteiro confirmed to me in an email that the bread is UPF, primarily due to the industrial additive wheat gluten. It is often used to strengthen dough before baking. If you buy bread at the grocery store, like I did, it’s almost certainly UPF as well. But perhaps this says more about the perplexing and arbitrary standards for ultra-processed foods than it does about the bread itself.
It’s not always clear what exactly qualifies as ultra-processed foods. Monteiro’s rubric, called NOVA, divides foods into four categories. “Unprocessed foods” include raw vegetables and fruits. “Processed ingredients” refer to things like edible oil and honey. “Processed foods” include things like canned vegetables. “Ultra-processed foods” also include Skittles, fish sticks, and other junk foods, as well as infant formula and flavored yogurt. It is especially difficult to draw the line between ultra-processed foods and processed foods. NOVA does not provide specific standards for bread and soda, for example, but it does recommend ultra-processed foods, such as foods that contain ingredients “never or rarely used in the kitchen” – fructose corn syrup and hydrolyzed proteins.
But even after reading Monteiro’s countless papers outlining the NOVA classification, food classification is not as simple as it seems. NOVA cites “pre-sliced bread” as an example of an ultra-processed product, but does automatically slicing mean the food is ultra-processed, or does it simply mean the food is ultra-processed? I didn’t know if it was a signal indicating that something was being done. maybe Super processed. (For my bread, Monteiro told me that the presence of wheat gluten is the “single marker” of ultra-processing.) But added gluten can be caused by hydrolyzed proteins or industrial sweeteners. is not nearly the same. The fact that a single ingredient, and one as innocuous as wheat gluten, could lump my bread together with a Twinkie made me question the reliability of the entire system. .
The desired attributes of bread, such as slicing, felt so arbitrary that I began to suspect that I was applying the criteria incorrectly. The nutritionists I contacted were also struggling. Marion Nestle, professor emeritus of nutrition at New York University, defended When I contacted the NOVA system, they said they were not sure if the bread I was eating was an ultra-processed food. That’s because most bread is made from real, natural foods, even though they’re laced with industrial additives. Monteiro seemed confused at first, too. When I sent him the ingredients list, he initially said my bread was freshly processed (not ultra-processed) until I specifically asked about wheat gluten. He claimed the bread was “much better than your average ultra-processed bread.” But the idea of UPF is to try to avoid this category altogether.
Coach Monteiro’s team also seems to have been struggling with a lack of bread for a long time. Although nearly every paper they write on this system classifies bread as an ultra-processed product, they note that “bread is relatively harmless, even in typically cheap and degraded forms.” claims. In 2015, a research team classified “French bread” as a “processed product,” but classified “sliced bread” as a “ultra-processed product.”
Even though I accepted that my bread was ultra-processed, I couldn’t understand why it tasted so bad. Much of the research on the health effects of bread has focused on the nutrients, or lack thereof, in specific products, particularly white bread. Researchers believe that people may not be eating more of processed bread primarily because certain additives in bread have not been well studied and that processed bread is easier to chew and swallow. I’m worried about that.
I’ve only been trying to cut my UPF for less than a week and I’m already frustrated. Things got even worse when I went back to the grocery store to try to find a replacement. At first glance, no bread seemed to fit the bill. The Real Bread Campaign, an advocacy group focused on reducing consumption of ultra-processed bread, recommends buying natural sourdough from your local bakery or making it yourself, but it’s not easy to get your hands on it. It’s almost useless advice for many Americans who can’t even afford it. A grocery store, let alone a boulangerie. At first glance, the NOVA system appears to be the simplest diet in the world. All you have to do is avoid certain foods. But if that list becomes too extensive and you can’t eat a single slice of whole-wheat bread, it becomes unworkable. The same goes for yogurt and cereals, most of which are also prohibited.
The bread fiasco may seem like a straw man designed to make the entire system seem pointless and unworkable. Some food scientists have criticized NOVA for unfairly disparaging some healthy foods by making them too broad, but these arguments are making billions of dollars by making people sick. It’s also what major food companies are doing maliciously to defend the food industry. Monteiro said that by focusing on a single food, you “focus on the trees and lose the forest.” But this whole exercise, the guidelines being confusing and not clearly explaining why certain attributes of foods are worth avoiding, weighed on me.
This is not all NOVA’s fault. This clumsy classification highlights an even deeper problem with our knowledge (or lack thereof) about UPF. In short, we don’t know why Ultra-processed foods are very bad for us. Recent clinical trials have had participants eat ultra-processed or unprocessed diets that match certain key nutrients, but something beyond the UPF nutritional content makes people eat more and lower their weight. was found to increase. What it is remains unclear. Until you understand that, advice about which foods to eat and which foods to avoid always seems arbitrary, and in the case of bread, a little silly.
I ended up finding bread at the supermarket that was clearly not ultra-processed. The bread, if you could call it that, was imported from Germany. It only had four ingredients and smelled like dry grass. There were no air pockets or delicious crispy skin. Even when toasted, it didn’t get crispy. It’s getting hot and painful. For now, I’m going to stick to my regular healthy bread.
