SLÁINTE - TO YOUR GOOD HEALTH! - In Praise of Bread
By Maureen B. Keane MS CN
It's March which means it's time for Sláinte's yearly rant on faux Irish customs.
Yes, you, the drunken leprechaun holding a four leaf clover. Really, what were you thinking? A four leaf clover is an American symbol of luck; the three leaf shamrock is an Irish symbol of the Holy Trinity (unless the Pope has added a fourth person to the Trinity and neglected to inform Sláinte).
Likewise, anyone drinking green beer should hang their heads with their obscenely green tongues in shame. There are many types of Irish beers and ales but none of them are green. And please don't get me started on corned beef.
So pluck a leaf off those clovers, get yourself a proper pint of normal color and quaff it down with some ham, cabbage and potatoes.
Ditch the drunken leprechaun while you're at it; no one really thinks it's funny; they are just humoring you. Now back to this month's column.
Sláinte figures St. Patrick's Day is the perfect time for a little bread re-education. With the advent of the low carb diet, bread fell out of favor. For what seemed a long while carbs were blamed for everything that ailed you.
If you were overweight, it was probably due to the amount of carbohydrates you ate. Tired all the time? That was carbs too. Ditto diabetes, heart disease, etc., etc. Bread was a villain.
Bread fed yeast that caused systemic Candida infections. Since flour and water made a glue "paste," bread must adhere to the lining of colon, sticking it together to cause constipation and other woes.
The reasoning behind that (and Sláinte heard and read it too often) makes Sláinte's head spin. Too often when Sláinte talked to people who believed they had lost weight on a low carb diet, she found they were not really on a low carb diet.
Usually they had switched from a high fat to a lower fat diet and that was the cause of the weight loss. Sure, people lost weight on low carb diets but they then regained it again, just as with other diets. Studies show weight loss the same on low and high carb diets after one year.
Most people cannot stay on a low carb diet. Their bodies just won't let them which is one reason why the low carb craze is fast losing favor. This is not to say that some people have not had excellent results on such diets.
Some people have no problem staying on them as well. But Sláinte has found they are exception not the rule. Not every diet suits every person nor is every diet beneficial to every body.
Bread has to be man's second favorite source of carbohydrate (with sugar being the first) and now that carbohydrate is back "in" we can all indulge again. Those who are still holding onto the old myth that bread is fattening can now take comfort on finding that just the opposite is true.
Bread's high-fiber, complex carbohydrate content makes it one of the more filling and least fattening foods around.In two separate research studies with overweight college students bread was found to actually aid in weight loss.
In one study, volunteers lost an average of nine pounds over a 10 week period when fed eight slices of whole grain bread a day and given free choice of other foods.
In a similar study, one group of volunteers lost an average of 14 pounds by eating 12 slices of white bread a day, while the second group of volunteers lost an average of 19 pounds when fed the same amount of high-fiber whole grain bread.
The college students lost weight because the generous daily allowance displaced fattier, high-calorie foods from their diet. Fiber is an additional help in weight loss as it attracts water, is more filling, binds with fats and helps in maintaining a clean and motile digestive tract.
Now that we are officially eating bread again, Sláinte hopes the popularity of the bread machine returns. These little miracle workers produce a loaf of home baked bread in just a couple of hours. Just add the ingredients, close the lid and turn it on. The machine mixes, and kneads the bread, lets it rise and then bakes it to a golden brown.
The ingredients can even be added the night before and time set to bake the bread while you sleep. You wake to the aroma of fresh warm bread. Can't eat a whole loaf of bread? Buy a machine that bakes small loaves perfect for one and two person families.
But can't you buy that in stores? Sure but the key benefit of having a bread maker is that it allows you to choose the ingredients.
Bread machines have given thousands of people who have special dietary restrictions the first opportunity to enjoy palatable and delicious wheat-free, dairy free, or gluten-free breads because they allow us to have complete control over the quality of our bread ingredients.
Celiac disease is one of the Celtic diseases. People who suffer from Celiac disease have a toxic reaction to two of the amino acids present in wheat, rye and barley. When a person with celiac disease eats even a small bit of one of these grains it triggers the immune system to attack and destroy the lining of the small intestine.
Before the advent of bread machines celiac patients who wanted to still eat bread had to settle for often unpalatable gluten-free bread sold in stores. The gluten-free bread you can make in a bread machine tastes so much better.
People with allergies also benefit from baking their own bread. It is easy to substitute ingredients. For example, they can leave out the wheat and substitute another grain or remove any trace of milk, eggs or nuts.
Picky kids? Bread can be an excellent source of protein and calories needed for growth during childhood.
The addition of legume flours such as garbanzo flour and soy flour will increase both the quantity and quality of the protein in bread, as will the addition of milk, yogurt, soy milk, and eggs.
Heart healthy calories can be added by including canola, high-oleic safflower, and olive oils, whole nuts and seeds as well as nut, seed and legume butters.
Sláinte likes to think of bread as one of the simpler pleasures of life, an uncomplicated food in an otherwise complicated world. But if you don't have the time to bake your own or the energy to knead a loaf at the end of the day, a bread machine is an affordable luxury that will do it all for you. Treat yourself; you deserve it.
Sláinte!
Maureen Keane MS CN is a graduate of Bastyr University and member of the American Dietetic Association. She is the best selling author of Juicing for Life, What to Eat When You Have Cancer, What to Eat when You Have Diabetes and 14 other health books. If you have a question or comment regarding nutrition or health that you would like to see addressed in this column, email it to Maureen@KeaneNutrition.com.
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