Active Low-Carber Forums - View Single Post - I can’t even: “The Scientific Case for Eating Bread”

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We have conducted several meta-analyses on whole-grain consumption and health outcomes like Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and premature mortality,” says Dagfinn Aune, a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Public Health at Imperial College London. “When looking at specific sources of grains, whole-grain bread, whole-grain breakfast cereals, brown rice, and wheat bran were all associated with reduced risks.”

“Bread isn’t the baddie it’s made out to be.”
Asked if bread should be considered a “junk” food, Aune says the opposite is true. “Whole-grain breads are healthy, and a high intake of whole grains is associated with a large range of health benefits,” he says, citing links to lower rates of heart disease, cancer, and mortality. In fact, his research has found that eating the equivalent of 7.5 slices of whole-grain bread per day is linked with “optimal” health outcomes.

Sure. Bread is healthful, when compared to um, other bread. And whole grain bread is healthful compared to donuts, pizza, etc.. Compared to not eating much wheat at all, and not eating much carbohydrate at all--not so much.

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Others agree. “If you look at these large diet studies on people who live the longest with the least disease, fiber and whole grains are always major components,” says Joanne Slavin, PhD, a professor of food science and nutrition at the University of Minnesota.

My go-to point for this is probability-based. Of seven-plus billion people on the planet, roughly seven-plus billion of them are on high carbohydrate diets. A massive number of societies on high carb diets versus a handful on low carb--that just doesn't give enough of a sampling. Even so, looking at the "blue zones" of people eating high carb diets and living especially long, you don't even have to take off your socks to count them, an awful lot of people are eating bread to come up with a pretty small sample of societies that produced more than the usual number of centenarians. Most of the people eating "traditional" diets are not hunter-gatherers, they're eating agriculture-based diets. Some, like the Okinawans, had access to both a traditional diet, and modern medicine as well as a modern understanding of hygiene, a less stressful environment, etc.

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While she doesn’t advocate for the unchecked consumption of white bread, Slavin points out that it and other starchy carbs—white rice, pasta, potatoes—form the foundation of most diets worldwide and aren’t an obvious issue if you’re watching your total caloric intake.

Actually--it's more like these aren't an obvious issue if you're not watching your calorie intake--that is, if these foods don't seem to be trying to make you fat, if your metabolism works the way it ought and food intake to appetite gives you a good result.

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While olive oil and fatty fish get most of the positive press, bread (and not just the whole-grain types) is considered a “major” component of Mediterranean-style diets, which have repeatedly been linked to health and longevity. Studies that have specifically looked at bread in the context of these diets have found that people who eat the most whole-grain breads—six slices or more a day—are the least likely to be overweight or obese.

I could imagine a study of people of Hadza ancestry showing those eating large amounts of honey annually having better outcomes, at least for modern metabolic syndrome type disease. Why? Not because honey is a super healthy food, it's clearly not, even in the Hadza. (The men eat more honey than the women. Result? Crummier teeth). But in the Hadza--honey is a likely marker for a traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle. People eating more traditional Mediterranean diets and living more traditional lifestyles are going to be overrepresented in the whole grain eaters--as are people who are health conscious.