Enriched Wheat Flour vs. Whole Grain / Whole Wheat Flour

Check out the first ingredient in your bread. Is it “enriched”? The term enriched means to improve, or enhance the quality of, however, using this word on the back of a loaf of bread is reeeeally misleading…

When a grain is processed and turned into a flour, it is stripped of it’s nutrients. The “enriching” process adds some extra synthetic vitamins and minerals to the flour, but the nutritional value does not come close to the original, natural whole grain. On top of that, one of the added “nutrients” is a form of iron–not the kind that human bodies need, but instead one that has no nutritional value. This type of iron “may be toxic”, according to the FDA.

Thanks again, FDA.

In addition to its lack of nutrition, enriched flour has a high Glycemic Index. It is not absorbed by our bodies in the same way that a complex carbohydrate like a whole grain is absorbed. Instead, our body reacts to this nutrition-less starch in the same way as it reacts to sugar. And how is this, you might ask?

When you eat sugar (or enriched flour), your blood sugar spikes. In response to the flood of extra sugar in the blood, your body releases huge amounts of insulin, a hormone secreted by the pancreas that converts blood sugar (called glucose) into glycogen, which is the form of sugar that’s stored in the body to be used for energy. Once your body fills up its stores of glycogen in your liver and your muscles, it begins storing the extra glycogen in the adipose tissues, or your fat. Your fat is stored right beneath the skin, around the internal organs, and between your muscles.

This is what adipose tissue looks like.

So next time you’re eating your enriched wheat bread that, according to the ingredient labels, has ZERO grams of fat, you’re accumulating fat.

It gets worse?

When our insulin increases as a response to too much sugar in the blood, its job is to lower the blood sugar. What we experience is a sugar high (high blood sugar) followed by a crash, a period of low energy, hunger, and carb/sugar cravings.

So not only do these simple carbs make you fat while you’re eating them, but they also cause you to be hungrier, eat more, and crave the bad stuff.

The Solution

I sound like a broken record, but check the ingredients label. The first ingredient (what the product contains most of) should be whole wheat flour, or whole grain flour.

I don’t eat bread that contains flour, but B does. This is what we buy:

It’s not perfect nor preservative-free, but it’s close, and contains no high fructose corn syrup. It’s currently the best thing that Walmart offers. Trader Joes and Whole Foods have TONS of good options.

We also both love Ezekiel, which is completely flour-free and contains sprouted grains rather than stripped, sad fragments of the original grain. Sprouted grains contain less starch and more nutrients and are better for our digestive systems. You can read about the benefits of sprouted grains here.

You can buy Ezekiel bread, English muffins, and even tortilla wraps in the refrigerator section of health food stores (and Giant Eagle!)

So there you have it. Eating fat will not make you fat as quickly as eating carbs will. (non-vegetable carbs, that is.) And if you’re one of those people who gets super tired halfway through the day, change up your carb intake and add some healthy, slowly digested and nutrient-rich grains into your diet and feel the difference in your mood and energy levels.

Source: here, here, & here.