There is an old saying that I like: ‘The whiter the bread, the quicker you’re dead.’ If you don’t know it already, it’s surprising and annoying to learn that white flour is bad for your health. It is the mainstay of many people’s diets – and we just don’t need it.
What is white flour?
White flour (wheat flour or enriched wheat flour) is the white powder that is left after stripping all of the nutrients and fiber out of a grain of wheat. Milling removes the best bits of the grain – the wheat germ and the outer bran layer – so out go the vitamins, minerals and most of the dietary fiber. White flour contains 60 per cent of the whole grain – excluding the best part. You are left with poor quality proteins and fattening starch.
But it’s ‘enriched’, which sounds good!
Yeah, don’t be fooled by that. Because of health problems created by eating white flour, in 1941, a law required the addition of a small amount of vitamins B1, B2, B3 and iron. ‘Enriched’ is not an accurate description. The synthetic vitamins and minerals that are added back in does not replace the thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, pyroxidin, pantothenic acid, folic acid, vitamin E, calcium, phosphorus, zinc, copper, manganese, potassium, iron, magnesium and fiber that were lost or destroyed. No white flour product provides anything near 100% of the original goodness in the grain.
Bleaching
Why is white flour so startlingly white? Because it is chemically bleached. When you eat white bread, you are eating residues from whichever bleach the mill has used. White flour is then dried in kilns at high temperatures which kill off any remaining nutriments. Eating mass-produced bread is like eating cardboard in terms of its lack of flavour and dietary benefit.
So why on earth do manufacturers use it/like it?
White flour is so stripped of goodness that it takes forever to go rancid. For them, it is a great material (remember mixing white flour and water as a kid to get glue?) to mix with sugars and other questionable ingredients to serve as breads, cereal, biscuits, cookies, pretzels, cereal bars and snacks to an unsuspecting public. White flour products have very little nutritional value, and in excess can also actually be harmful to our health.
White flour is the other sugar
Most people know that eating too much sugar can lead to blood sugar problems. – but white flour causes the same problems. White flour may not taste sweet, but as far as your blood sugar is concerned, your body can’t tell the difference between a white croissant and a spoonful of sugar. When someone eats refined carbohydrates (white flour, cereals, bread, biscuits, snacks) or simple sugars, they require very little metabolism by the body, so they enter the bloodstream rapidly. This causes a quick rise in blood sugar levels which triggers a similarly rapid release of the body’s sugar-regulating hormone, insulin. This gives you the ‘lift’ followed by the ‘crash’, which makes you feel tired and down. If this happens a long over a long period of time, it may lead to thrombosis, high blood pressure, heart disease, hypoglycemia, type II diabetes, decreased immune function, adrenal stress.
Other problems associated with white flour.
Eating too many products made with white flour can contribute to constipation, as well, if you aren’t getting lots of good fiber in the rest of your diet. This can lead to Crohn’s, Irritable Bowel Syndrome and cancer of the colon. White flour also slows down the body’s metabolism, which can create digestive problems and greater fat storage, so it is also associated with being overweight.
Why do people love it?
I ask myself this. I think there are a couple of reasons. Partly, it is conditioning because a lot of people grew up with the taste and the texture of white bread. It’s what people are used to. Also, the generation of grownups today probably tried not-very-nice whole wheat bread as a kid. Today, there are gorgeous wholemeal loaves available. (I make wholemeal spelt bread that people beg for.) But it is a habit that you can change. As an American, I grew up on Wonderbread, which now I couldn’t possibly bring myself to eat, although I do occasionally enjoy a white croissant in the morning.
Eat whole grains
I say, eat 100 per cent of the grain. Nature, who is smarter than we are, has given us all of the goodness and fiber we need in a grain if we eat the whole thing. Whole grains are better because they:
- have B vitamins (thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, pyroxidin, pantothenic acid, folic acid), vitamin E, calcium, phosphorus, zinc, copper, manganese, potassium, iron and magnesium
- contain high levels of dietary fiber
- contain unsaturated fatty acids
- have a low glycaemic index
- stimulate the metabolism
- have lower levels of bad LDL cholesterol with higher levels of good HDL cholesterol
- help keep you full longer
- lower risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, high blood pressure, colon cancer and breast cancer
- lower risk of chronic inflammation (linked to heart disease, osteoporosis, cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s)
- help avoid gallstones
- keep your bowels regular
Eat wholemeal products and stay thinner
Eating a lot of white flour products encourages the body to store fat because the white flour makes the pancreas secrete insulin, the fat-storing hormone. This also slows down your metabolism and stimulates your appetite, creating an ugly circle. However, a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, which involved over 74,000 female nurses aged 38-63 years over a 12-year period and was conducted by Harvard Medical School and Brigham & Women’s Hospital. The study found that women who ate more whole grains consistently weighted less than those who ate less fibre-rich foods. Also, women eating the highest amount of dietary fibre from whole grains were 49% less likely to gain weight – compared to women eating foods made from refined, white flours. So you don’t have to avoid carbs to lose weight – you have to avoid refined/white flour carbs.
How to reduce white flour
- Only eat foods containing white flour 3 times a week.
- Switch to wholemeal breads, cereal, pastas, biscuits and snacks. (And don’t only eat wheat; see previous blog ‘Eat Other Grains’.) Just take however, that many breads in England that appear wholemeal, are not. Brown bread and multigrain breads are white flour based. Check the ingredients. You should see wholemeal or wholewheat flour.
What we do at Planet Organic
At Planet Organic, we have a HUGE range of wholegrain products – and not just wheat. Most of our white flour products contain organic white flour which does not go through any bleaching or heating processes to artificially whiten it. We carry some products that contain conventional white flour – but only if it is unbleached.
Whole grain foods to replace white flour foods
| Avoid/Reduce | Use |
| bread made with white flour | bread made with wholemeal wheat, spelt, rye, buckwheat, quinoa sprouted breads |
| biscuits made with white flour – sweet and savoury | biscuits made with wholemeal wheat, rye, spelt, amaranth, buckwheat, corn, crisp breads, oatcakes, rice cakes |
| pasta made with white flour | pasta made with wholemeal wheat, spelt, Kamut, gluten-free pasta made with rice, corn, quinoa, amaranth, buckwheat, Japanese noodles made with rice, millet and rice, sweet potato and buckwheat |
| snacks made with white flour | corn tortilla chips, Japanese brown rice crackers, gluten-free pretzels |
| breakfast cereals | muesli, granola, porridge oats, puffed rice, puffed quinoa, flaked wholemeal wheat, spelt, rye, quinoa, corn, rice, millet, barley, buckwheat |
Tags: flour, white flour
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