Let’s understand what healthy means first. A healthy product is the one which when consumed provides energy & offers a benefit to your body nutritionally.
At a time, when consumers turned health-conscious and started avoiding white or maida breads, brands became smarter in finding ways to trick us into purchasing a cheap product (the ingredients) in the name of health.
Which in today’s case is brown bread. As you would be thinking what’s wrong with brown bread. It’s made from whole wheat flour which is good for us.
Is it? Well, if you turn the pack and look at the ingredients, the first ingredient is maida and whole wheat flour is just 5%. This alone is a strong enough reason to not buy a product like this.
And then comes a list of never-ending food additives such as preservatives, acidity regulators, emulsifiers, improvers, antioxidants of which some preservatives and emulsifiers may give side effects.
In another bread we saw, the second ingredient was Maida and a bunch of food additives including brown color to make sure it looks like an atta bread.
In fact, even in one of the multigrain breads, we saw maida as their first ingredient.
If there’s one thing that these brands have gotten good at is their marketing & advertising.
So, the takeaway for you is to evaluate every product (including bread) you purchase by looking at their ingredient label first and not just trusting the front of the pack or their marketing message.
Also, as a consumer of bread, our recommendation is to look for a local bakery bread, that’s made of just 5 ingredients – whole wheat flour, yeast, water, salt, and oil (for greasing only).
These commercial breads are made in factories and so many food additives are added which perform specific purposes in their manufacturing but they have no role to perform in your body.
If you can’t find bakery bread, look for bread with the maximum amount of whole wheat flour and no Maida. So basically a 100% whole wheat or atta bread with minimal use of food additives is what should aim for when a freshly made bakery bread isn’t available.
References used –
https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/56317
https://www.sustainweb.org/realbread/food_additives/#banned