Lake Edge United Church of Christ

For Our Minds, Souls, and Bodies: Advertising is the ‘wonder’ in Wonder Bread. – Jeff Richards

Oh, so true! Buying bread should be easy, but in today’s world, labels often don’t tell us what we need to know. But, we can be smart and read through the glitter of advertising. So, let’s keep this simple. First of all, and most importantly, let’s take a look at the type of flour used. Whole-wheat flour is what we want, because it includes the entire grain (bran, germ, and endosperm). This gives us all the health benefits those wonderful grains have to offer.
Wheat flour (without the “whole”) does NOT contain the bran or the germ, so it is less nutritious.

Enriched wheat flour just means that some of the nutrients lost in the processing (thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, vitamin D, iron, folic acid, calcium) get added back into the bread. However, that still leaves out the bran and the germ – so the value, nutritionally speaking, is still below that of whole-wheat or whole-grain. Stone ground? That’s nothing fancy, it just describes the way it is milled; we’ll still want to look for whole-wheat or whole-grain.

Suggestions for making our daily bread purchase:
1. Look for “whole” – whole grain, whole wheat, and stone-ground whole wheat. For example, although Nature’s Own All Natural 9-Grain sounds healthy, the 1st few ingredients are enriched wheat flour, water, honey – not whole-grain flour! We might want to try Nature’s Own 100% Whole Wheat.
2. Look at the list of ingredients - the 1st ingredient listed is the one present in the largest amount. In breads, we want that 1st ingredient to include the word “whole.” For example, Pepperidge Farm Light Style 7 Grain’s lists “unbromated unbleached enriched wheat flour” first. Sounds healthy, but it’s lacking the whole-grain
flour. We could try Pepperidge Farm 100% Natural 100% Whole Wheat or Pepperidge Farm Whole Grain 100% Whole Wheat – their 1st ingredient is the whole-wheat flour we’re looking for.
3. Seeing the words “made with whole grains” may be meaningless. For example, the 1st ingredient in Wonder Made with Whole Grains White Bread is really just enriched wheat flour. Whole-wheat flour doesn’t show up on the ingredient list until after water, so the bread has more water than whole-wheat flour – not nutritious.
4. Always check the serving size. If cutting calories is important to us, then we need to look for the calories per slice, and compare. For example, a slice of Pepperidge Farm Whole Grain 100% Whole Wheat weighs 43 grams and provides 110 calories, but a slice of Stoneground 100% whole Wheat bread is only 25 grams and gives us
only 70 calories. If we routinely eat 2 slices/day, in one week we can cut 560 calories from our diet by choosing the lower calorie bread.

So, let’s avoid the folly of Wonder Bread and enjoy the healthy pleasures that beautiful whole grains have to offer us. There is nothing as satisfying as a slice of delicious bread.