28/09/2023
Got bread? 🍞
I struggle to buy healthy bread in South Africa, especially from supermarket chains. This bread pictured is from and whilst it’s not for me (it’s for my boyfriend) it was the healthiest I could find. There are healthier breads out there in SA and these usually exist in small independent shops. But today convenience won.
The struggle to buy healthy bread in SA supermarkets is this; most breads here are made with mostly white flour. Even if they advertise “wholewheat flour” - just take a closer look at the ingredients list and you will see that typically supermarket bread contains mostly white flour and maybe some wholewheat flour too. This is misleading to the consumer.
My problem, aside from the misleading consumers with clever marketing tactics, is that white flour is processed food. This means that it contains very little nutrients. Often nutrients have to be added back in to be able to legally be sold as the processing caused such great nutrient loss and these are often synthetic = hard for your body to absorb and use as they are different to the original and natural state a vitamin is presented in.
Back to the point. Processed foods have very little goodness in them because it’s been processed out of them. Diets high in processed foods have been linked to an array of health problems including heart disease, cancer and premature aging.
So the remedy is learn to read the ingredients label - hint - it’s on the back not the front. And then start to look at the size of the ingredients in the food item. Typically food items are meant to be listed in size order.
But just look at the second photo in this post - the Ingredients are not set out correctly. The photo suggests the first list with the percentages is the breakdown for the ratio of each ingredient. However, look again; below it is the FULL LIST of ALL ingredients. Clever - make people think it’s super healthy by them only reading the first list.
I would partially like to know just how much brown sugar is in this bread as you also do not state this. Surely that’s illegal?