Give Us This Day... What's In Our Bread?

Give us this day... what's in our bread?

Ray Hill
Founder and Secretary of the Health Food Institute

According to the latest news we are moving away from the anti-carb diet which has hit bread sales. This is excellent news for the bakery industry as it is currently witnessing increasing sales, predicting that the market for bread will grow by 15% during the next couple of years, with total sales of £7.8bn–£9bn.

It does not surprise me that sales of the supermarket's white sliced has been hard hit over the past few years. However, one only needs to scan the supermarket shelves to realise it does still has a huge slice of the bread market.

According to figures produced by Harris and Hays, a food trends company, we now buy the equivalent of 60 loaves per person a year. And it is now established by The Grocer magazine that the supermarket sliced loaf sales increased by 4.6% in 2023, the equivalent of 28.6m loaves of bread.

Anti-gluten customers tend to be the reason for diminishing bread sales over the past few years, but according to nutritionist Rhianna Lambert, gluten can be a problem for coeliacs or non-coeliac gluten sensitivity. However, it is generally harmless for most of the population.

There is no doubt that sourdough bread has been the driver toward the increase in bread sales, with the foodies' favourite being wholemeal sourdough.

The best nutritional value is in wholemeal bread whose ingredients are, or should be, just wholemeal flour, yeast, salt and water. It is always worth reading the list of ingredients, even asking for the list if the bread is not wrapped, to avoid purchasing the ultra-processed varieties.

All supermarket white loaves have additives, mostly synthetic vitamins to replace the natural ones which are removed when the bran and wheatgerm are removed – two of the most important ingredients – bran providing the fibre necessary to ensure smooth passage through the digestive tract and wheatgerm providing natural vitamin E.

White sugar is often added to white bread. It has absolutely nothing of nutritional value and is possibly the most unhealthy ‘food' consumed.

It is worth remembering that a loaf containing additives not found in your kitchen and which comes wrapped in plastic would usually be considered to be an ultra-processed food which, of course, is best avoided as it can result (with regular consumption) in diseases such as diabetes.

Many standard loaves and some wholemeal breads can have sugar added as well as excess salt. I cannot recall seeing any changes recently to legislation which has maintained that wholemeal bread is not allowed any additional ingredients other than wholemeal flour, yeast salt and water.

It is beyond me why one would want to add sugar to a wholemeal dough. A while ago I saw an allegedly wholemeal loaf with white flour as one of its ingredients. I reported it at the supermarket desk but it was still being sold on a later visit.

Only wholemeal free from additives is healthy.

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