This article was originally published here and is part of the January 2009 round up.
The following story is, unfortunately, true.
Before the 1950’s, most bakeries in Australia, indeed the world, ran 2 shifts of workers because the dough was fermented throughout the night, long and slow. That bread was made from plain, unbleached wheat flour, and now, seen in retrospect, was superior to most breads of today.
I would often visit our local bakery with my uncle, who home-delivered bread for many years. During the 50’s, the US-based bakery giant Tip Top came to Brisbane, and started to buy up all the small bakeries it could; other giants competed with them, meaning that in very quick time we had only 2 or 3 bakers in the entire city, ditto in all parts of Australia.
One of the very first actions these corporate bakers were to take was to introduce the fast loaf (3 hours from start to finish), effectively eliminating the need for half, or one entire shift, of their labour force. This was actually required by a new law called The Bread Act.
This seemingly innocuous cost-cutting decision would relentlessly impact and compromise the health of each and every bread lover since – that’s virtually everybody since the 50’s – and would cause countless deaths, bestow myriad miseries, as it continues to do. The first act of a major tragedy that still plays, everywhere, everyday.
Very basic bread that had once been fermented for a healthy 8 hours or more was now brewing in just 2 hours! Yeast levels were increased, accelerants and proving agents introduced. Glutens, starches and malts were not given the remotest opportunity to convert to their digestible potentials, in a sickly anti-nutrient-laden, gluepot stew. Breads are still made this way, even the so-called health breads!
Fast-made bread is one of the most destructive implementations into the modern diet. It has become normal fare, and poorly-prepared and poorly-digested wheat is the chief contributor to the current plague of “gluten-intolerance”, obesity, diabetes, candida diseases and many allergenic conditions.
Gluten (once properly fermented) is a wonderful vegetable protein. It is actually a mix of the two elastic proteins, gliadin and glutenin. So-called gluten-intolerant adults and kids are eating my long-ferment bread with amazement at, delight in, the taste, the clarity and the painless, satisfactory satiety.
Sure, be intolerant of gluten in its under-prepared, expedient form. It most certainly is toxic. Such sensitivity is wise and self-preserving, but do not condemn gluten and wheat via this premise. We are not gluten-intolerant; we are allergic to the accelerating haste of modern life!
Wheat is, yes, potentially one of the most highly allergenic foods on the planet, but like soya beans, converts to a truly great food once it is fermented long enough.
All current breads, pastas, pizzas, cakes, biscuits, and on and on and on, contain complex proteins which have not been given the requisite fermentation time to convert to their excellent, digestible alter-egos.
Wheat also contains a difficult starch and a highly allergenic maltose, but within that same complexity, when correctly fermented, there lies varied and splendid nutrients – 18 amino acids (proteins), complex carbohydrate (a super efficient source of energy), B vitamins, iron, zinc, selenium and magnesium, and maltase.
From a demon to a god in one ferment.
The catastrophic changes in bakery procedures were a disaster that went largely unnoticed in the 50’s, except by my baker/uncle and a few other observant souls. He became aware that from that fateful change onwards, many of his customers began to grow ill. Amy MacGrath made the same observation in her book “One Man’s Poison.”
Of course the 50’s also saw the introduction of mass pasteurisation of milk and other food perversions, so there were several developing culprits. This period marked the beginning of the end for bread and milk as healthy, nutritious staples, and signalled the onset of the demise of food in general.
Today, the absolute extreme of this perfidy is found in Hot Bread kitchens, which produce loaves of very toxic, allergy-inducing crud, in just 40 minutes from start of dough to baked finish!
Long Ferment Bread
The longer the ferment, the less yeast is required. Over time, even the smallest amount of yeast will slowly grow and spread throughout a dough. The addition of ginger powder (instead of sugar) to the original mix helps to create a strident growth network for even and healthy leavening to occur.
Sourdough leaven is a fine option to baker’s yeast, but bear in mind that sourdough is also yeast, also a leavening agent. It’s just that in sourdough the yeasts are attracted, gathered wild from the atmosphere.
Remember, whether you employ baker’s yeast or sourdough as the leaven, the actual dough fermenting time must be longer than 6 hours!
I have not only gluten-intolerants enjoying my wheat/granulated yeast bread, but also yeast-sensitive folk are also reporting no reaction – not 100% success of course, but enough to suggest that, just as proteins and starches transform in the long ferment process, the yeast positively alters also.
The tremendous upsurge in cases of gluten, carbohydrate and lactose sensitivity is a totally modern phenomena, and finds its origins in quick, economically convenient, and incorrect food preparation - forging a delusional, diversionary path that we have charted in just the last 50 years, far far away from traditional lines.
Bran is Bullshit!
Actually, far, far better to eat bullshit than bran! True.
Bran is the outer husk of any grain or seed, it is indigestible, and its high phytate content robs our bodies of nutrients, especially minerals, and stifles digestion. If we are eating well, we don’t need such gross fibrous brooms to “sweep out” our bowels.
Bran robs us of nutrients in another way also: Because bran is an irritant to the bowel, its radical stimulation of the peristaltic motion means that any foods accompanying the bran get shunted along far too rapidly in the bowel, severely restricting the crucial extraction of minerals and vitamins which would occur in a normal (slow) passage through the colon.
Not even to their pigs would the Chinese give bran, from any grain (rice included).
In 1542 England, the government-published “Dyetary of Health” stated “bread having too much bran is not laudable”. At that time, the rich ate plain bread, the poor ate the waste, the brown.
Bran is now lauded as a lifesaver, is present in so many of today’s foods. A huge market has been created for what was, for thousands of years, and deservedly so, rubbish.
Don’t toss it out though, it’s ideal for the compost heap or chipboard manufacture.
I have experimented with fermenting bran-rich wholemeal flour doughs for over 24 hours and still the resulting bread is indigestible.
The germ of grains too, like bran, is loaded with anti-nutrients.
Wheat germ oil is an excellent food, but prone to rapid rancidification, and this is true of the whole germ of any grain – not to be eaten raw, even if it’s super fresh – makes no difference, ‘cause the anti-nutrient phytates are still present.
This is what wholemeal means - that the bran and sometimes the germ too are left in the flour.
So you see, this is my case(not yet rested) - that whole don’t necessarily mean wholesome!
The ancient, tried and true slow-ferment baking way rejected outright the germ and bran of grains. It fermented doughs overnight, and delivered nourishing, allergen-free, 100% digestible bread from unbleached, long-fermented plain flour, just like my uncle did, and just like many of today’s tradition-savvy Italian and French bakers do.
Ask your bakers how long they leave their bread dough sit, or is it stand?
Some excellent bread bakers do exist – Sonoma in Sydney, Crystal Waters in Qld, SOL in Brisbane, and Goanna Bakery in Lismore. But don’t eat loaves that have been dusted with raw flour. This defeats and pollutes the basic purpose of the long fermentation.
Cereal Killers
“Puffed” cereals are particularly irksome because of the high heat and pressure processing, but flakes and other shaped cereals are no better, including the so-called health versions. Studies have shown that these heat-extruded grain preparations can have an even more adverse effect on the blood sugar than refined sugar.
Nevertheless, in television advertising, they are totally misrepresented as almost wonder foods, supported by sports stars with false and fabricated health claims.
All mueslis, cereals, fast-rise breads, puffed rice/corn cakes, pizza bases, pastas, pastries and biscuits contain under-prepared grains, and most contain dextro-malt, lecithin or glucose in one or more of their many disguises – hence numerous toxic, mineral-denying, anti-nutrient allergens plus indigestible proteins and carbs, etc. are being ingested. Yet most of these extremely popular foods can also be made from the same, but carefully fermented grains. It just takes time.
From the early 1960’s onwards, as a result of championing brown rice and wholemeal everything, we have given many deleterious substances totally unwarranted and misleading kudos. And we are suffering, en masse.
Billions of Asian (and other) peoples have eaten, for millennia, not whole, not brown, but white rice, exclusively!
How do proponents of brown rice get around this amazing statistic? Do they seriously think that these ancient societies got it wrong?
Give us a break!
The first cereal-gathering people would have tried eating and cooking grains many different ways, over aeons, as their stomachs’ and bodies’ reactions refined their attitudes to each grain. The white rice diet of Asia is the result of such ageless observation and tradition, from both dietary and medical standpoints.
If brown rice were healthier, they’d be eating it!
About the Author...
An explorer of all things freeing, I. N. Cognito is a Super Hero who strives to bring clarity and focus to issues of health and food freedom.
Jan 6th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
this is a truly enlightening document thank you so much, as one who has been diagnosed by so called professionals as having wheat allergy and gluten intolerance etc and gave birth to a really sick child who still suffers the tragic consequences of my poor diet when pregnant and lactating, i found this really helpful as i miss eating bread and now i know i can eat it if it is well made THANK YOU!
Jan 7th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
I order oat groats (whole oats) over the internet, soak in water overnight and cook in the morning - is this bad? If so, what are we supposed to do? Supermarket cereals are bad! Is there a specific type of white rice that is more nutritious than other white rice that you recommend? We only ate brown rice believing it was superior nutritionally to white rice! I love home made pasta! I order the whole wheat berries over the internet. I soak the whole wheat berries for 12 hours in water, drain, dry in the oven with the oven off. Grind the berries into flour, then make the pasta. But now you appear to be saying that whole wheat berries (grain) are bad! What exactly are we supposed to use? When we buy the flour, it is no longer fresh! Also, could you please explain how do we ferment pasta? And ferment for pizza crust? And other bakery items? Thank you for any help!
Jan 7th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
Linda
Yes, it’s a good article, but don’t believe everything you read! In my (non-professional, but well-read on food) opinion, there is no one universal ‘good food for everyone’ but of course there are some ‘facts’ that are universally applicable. It’s just working out which ones those are that can be tricky ! (read, read and more read). I believe that whole oats soaked etc are very good for you, particularly if you prepare them the way you do. I think you’ll find that brown rice is most definitely superior to white, just that some cultures are used to the white one so it’s ok for them. Check out for reference (just one example): http://www.greenlivingtips.com/articles/94/1/Brown-rice-vs-white-rice.html It’s not just nutitionally superior but causes slower release of carbohydrates etc.
If you really want to ferment pizza crust, you can make sourdough pizza dough, but it depends if you want to go to the trouble of making your own sourdough culture. If you’re interested in the subject, check out ‘World Sourdoughs from Antiquity’ by Ed Wood. It’s a great book and I’ve ‘captured’ and used my own sourdough culture using their method and it gives beautiful bread, pizza, pancakes, cakes etc. Also fun is: ‘Sourdough Jack’s Cookery’ - you might be able to get a second hand copy through the ‘net.
Jan 8th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Interesting thoughts!
Are there any scientific references? I would be extremely interested.
Alexa Fleckenstein M.D., physician, author.
Jan 9th, 2009 at 5:50 am
The gluten portion of the article is informative and makes plenty sense. The “white flour” part is mind-boggling. Yes, I’ve long wondered whether Italians traditionally made their pasta from white or whole flour, but had read it was whole. And what about the beriberi epidemic when the Europeans introduced rice refining to Asia? From my reading, they ate brown rice prior to that - in fact, it was the mass sickness spread after rice refining was introduced that led to the discovery of vitamin B, which was being discarded with the bran.
I look forward to more info on this!
Jan 9th, 2009 at 11:36 am
Hi Sam,
Thank you very much for the info! Hope I can find out how to ferment the pasta!
Jan 10th, 2009 at 11:33 am
I read the article with interest. However, for me, using the nom de plume, I. N. Cognito, stripped the writer of credibility. Anecdotal comments are not empirical evidence and unfortunately, no references for checking out the validity of information contained in the article were included.
Jan 16th, 2009 at 3:46 am
In response to Trish, I would like to respectfully point out that the purpose of anecdotal evidence is to stimulate one to find their own answers, and I, for one, hate that everything I read nowadays must have lists of references so long as to be impossible to actually verify their veracity. I much prefer someone who says “Hey, this is my experience, but don’t take my word for it, find what works for you.”
In response to the article, I too do not think that any refining is better than whole, and that if the whole grain is soaked, then it will become more bioavailible. However, I do agree that sourdough is far superior to modern bread.
My two cents,
Roxanne
Jan 22nd, 2009 at 8:26 pm
While I agree that the high rate of gluten intolerance in the modern world is probably the result of a reaction to the modern diet, I must disagree with this writer for several reasons.
1. S/he speaks of ‘fermenting’ dough for eight hours as opposed to the new process of bread making which requires only a fast process. S/he actually means ‘proving’, or rising, which is not a fermentation process. In this way sourdough bread is a fermented product, which also requires a long proving (our home made sourdough takes several hours to prove).
I agree that fermentation is a great way to make some foods more nutrient dense and digestible for us.
2. With regard to brown rice - the trend to white rice was established, much as the trend to white bread, by poor people attempting to ‘keep up with the Joneses’. They did in fact each large amounts of unpolished rice in Asia and other countries - however it became a sign of poverty to eat or serve brown rice. Hence the trend towards an unhealthier form of a whole food. In Nourishing Traditions Sally Fallon publishes an interesting study on beri beri and brown rice, as has already been mentioned.
3. Many people who have a gluten intolerance are of celtic origin. When the potato became the staple diet of the Irish, they moved away from eating wheat (wheat was grown and harvested, but delivered to the English landowners) - after the famine and as they emigrated to countries where wheat was predominant, they found they were unable to tolerate it. This is a form of evolution if you like - coeliac disease is a genetic illness found mostly in people with a celtic heritage.
I have the impression that this author needs to read up on some history of food and culture before publishing an article that some people will rely on for health reasons.
Mar 6th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Hi
Have had the family on a gluten free diet for about five years and have recently had the test to find out that we are not coeliac. My kids still regularly complain of strange tummy aches and feeling hungry soon after eating or feeling sick after eating. I am interested in trying your idea for bread but can not find a recipe that gets you to leave the dough for at least 8hrs, they all seem to say 1-4. Can you help me with a recipe to try that isn’t sour dough, just plain bread. Also could you explain how this theory affects the making of cakes, muffins etc which dont get left before baking. Thanks
Mar 8th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
This article was great on ideas, but low on substance really. I was interested at first, but turned off by unsubstantiated claims. Thankyou to those commenters who have addressed this more cogently and ably than myself.
Apr 1st, 2009 at 11:39 pm
Cecily,
There was another person (Ellie) who expressed similar concerns regarding this article. It was on another discussion forum (but within nourished magazine) and I addressed her concerns there. I think you may benefit from reading the post so I copy it here as well.
Ellie,
I reply to your mail, because I asked similar questions a while ago. I used to eat brown rice and wholemeal bread even though I instinctively felt that it wasn’t right. Then I did quite a bit of research and now I happily eat white rice and white bread (sourdough of course). I included my comments interspersed in your mail.
E: I would love to believe this, but it seems to be an opinion of the minority.
B: If you really want to believe something that is unconventional then I advice you stop believing that the validity of an argument is determined by the number of people who promote it. Once upon a time, most people believed that the earth was flat and not moving…
E: Many people who read articles on the internet (like this) think because it contains some quasi-scientific terms this person is talking pure fact. Anyone who has been to school (even at just secondary level) and been brifely introduced to referencing would have noticed this article lacks any form of it. Referencing is a key feature in acknowledging the sources of where the facts came from, and without references, there is no way to be sure that what is being relayed isn’t just someone’s OPINION, which is what I think is happening here. The infomation is also very anecdotal, as it has origins within the author’s family history, which also adds greatly to the prejudice of the writing.
B: I agree that Clive’s (Incognito’s) article is ‘limited’ in that it lacks references. Nevertheless, it (with its “quasi-scientific terms”) does an excellent job to get people THINK and prompt them to do further research if they are the type of people who need scientific data to be convinced. I’m one of those people, and I spent number of hours searching scientific databases to find articles on the issue of white vs. wholemeal bread. Search and you will find! (Even if it is only the opinion of the minority). If you prefer scientific writing style, then I can recommend a relatively old book (1956) to you by R.A. McCance and E.M. Widdowson titled “Breads white and brown: their place in thought and social history. From the cover: “ The book is controversial, is most interestingly written and is particularly well referenced and indexed. The authors themselves avoid prejudice and present the facts impartially.” The book has 720 references by the way, and the authors also report their own experiment on the nutritional value of white vs. wholemeal bread. The book is not published anymore so you can only buy it second hand form an antique book store. Clive, I can recommend this book to you as well if you ever feel the need to flesh your book up with references (not that I think it is necessary). The authors also published a short version of their book as an article (see: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13243690) which you can download if you have access to relevant databases.
E: Furthermore, if this were true, why would many highly qualified and experienced DOCTORS, nutritions and dieticians be agreeably advising us that the best possible diet should contain wholegrains and wholemeals?
B: To answer this question let me quote from the above mentioned article:
“It is of course quite possible that little attention will be paid to these experiments of ours until we are all dead and buried…The herd instinct ‘gives widely held believes a spurious validity irrespective of whether or not they are founded on real evidence’ (Beveridge, 1950). Anything which threatens to make an adult chance his beliefs, particularly if he expressed them openly, is disturbing for him and …[he] will react to these results by attacking the evidence as best as they can or by neglecting it, so escape from its disturbing effects.”
E: This is the first I have ever heard that wholemeals are anything but complementary to our health, and it doesn’t suprise me that it has appeared in some opinionated, unreferenced article on the web. For me (or anyone) to even consider what is being written here as even resembling some sort of truth, the author should have at least acknowledged her educated background (which I, very biasedly of course, take to be extremely limited in this area, but I will be quick to apologise profusely if I am wrong!). If you do not have the relevant qualifications or fact-based knowledge, you should not be allowed to be making such misleading statements.
B: I think you give too much credit to the so called ‘experts’ or doctors. I recommend you read a book by R.S. Mendelson titled “Confessions of a medical heretic”. Sorry for referring you to books instead of summarizing their argument but I’ve recently started to limit my time spent in front of my computer.
E: Yes, a lot of it sounds true, and I do not hesitiate to believe that the light shed on the reduced time in the fermenting process is partly to blame for everybody jumping on the coeliac bandwagon. However, as there is (not as yet) any hard and fast evidence AGAINST wholegrains (as this is definietly NOT hard and fast) this article cannot automatically be taken for fact.
B: Search and you will find!
E: People come on the internet for quick-fix solutions, and articles like this seem very believable and may very well cause someone to come to their own diagnosis. Before cutting out any essentail foodgroup (especially if considering switching wholegrains and brown, unprocessed wheat for WHITE!) one should consult a doctor or nutritionist. Such important advice should not come from someone with a screen name of “incognito”, who appears to be SELLING recipies or something similar.
B: I agree that some information on the internet can be detrimental to people, but I believe that Clive’s (Incognito’s) article is not one of them. As for the screen name “incognito” – I agree, it kind of gives off some negative vibes. It implies that the author is concealing his identity and not taking responsibility for what he says. It is a bit like me using the letter ‘b’ instead of Bettina :0)
May 5th, 2009 at 5:04 am
Thanks for this great article. I am disgusted by grain and bread products sold on the market that are passed off as being healthy for us to eat. My web site, Agriculture Society, has an article I wrote today and is dedicated to the untruths pushed by food companies about gluten-free products and why grains can be harmful. I love this magazine, keep up the fantastic, informative articles!
-Raine Saunders
http://www.agriculturesociety.com
May 26th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Hi I have read this article and these comments with interest. I wonder if anyone has tried Dom’s Tooth Saving Paste? It’s pretty expensive to buy, but he does include a recipe on the site for making the basic mix yourself.
Anyone?
May 29th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Meredith
I tried that tooth paste and I didn’t like it. It was too rough on my gums.
Jun 22nd, 2009 at 1:05 pm
The following multidisciplinary research study shows that CS patients subjected to an acute challenge tolerated breads produced with sourdough better than those started with baker’s yeast. These results showed that a bread biotechnology that uses selected lactobacilli, nontoxic flours, and a long fermentation time is a novel tool for decreasing the level of human intolerance to a certain amount of wheat flour. Work is in progress to confirm these results with a long-term in vivo challenge.
for further information about this interesting scientific study re fermentation and specific sourdough bread production for Celiac Sprue patients check out the link
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=348803
Dr Christian Eijkman in the late 19th Centrury, discovered that refined polished rice soley fed to chickens caused symptoms of Beri Beri, thiamine deficiency.
India has an epidemic with the highest genetic predisposition to diabetes type 2 incidence in the world, similar epidemic problems exist on other Asian continents.
Jul 3rd, 2009 at 2:33 am
Contemplate: could “gluten intolerance” really be intolerance to GMO’d grains? Read from Jeffrey M. Smith’s books to learn that the GMO process is a shotgun shooting all kinds of junk DNA into the DNA of the grain.
In Japan, about 19970’s GMO’d tryptophan killed many people before it was discovered that the GMO shotgun process had injected a DNA fragment that was acting on a program to kill. Tryptophan was quietly off the market for many years, and the cause was hushed up.
Could it be that the intolerance is not to gluten, but rather to the foreign injections?
(Just like “lactose intolerance” is really intolerance to processed milk? And fresh, unprocessed milk is tolerated by those who think they are lactose intolerant?)
Aug 5th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
I agree with Amanda (post No. 9) that there are concerns about eating foods made from over-refined carbohydrate-rich products. The reason why modern societies went for white flour and sugar in such a big way was because these “foods” don’t spoil easily. Vilhjamur Stefansson notes that flour bags can be split and spilt in a heap and the heap rained on and inside the flour still won’t have spoiled (”My Life Among the Eskimo”). And, of course, these denatured foods could be traded around the globe, since they didn’t spoil, and sold to native peoples, displacing their own healthy local foods.
This “keepability” is why the supermarkets love these sorts of substances and stuff them into every pre-packaged monstrosity they can - which is also why there’s so much obesity and diabetes.
It’s not about the bran; it’s about being stripped of nutrients.
I was amused to read a short piece on traditional African diets by Sally Fallon and Mary Enig. It seems that while we’re always been told that Africans eat plenty of bran, they don’t. They steep grain like millet to make lactic-fermented sour porridges - and then:
“… The grain is drained and the water discarded. Soaked grains are wet milled and passed through a sieve. The hulls or leavings in the sieve are discarded. In other words, the Africans throw away the bran.”
http://www.westonaprice.org/traditional_diets/out_of_africa.html
I’d be happy to lose the bran, if Clive could tell me how to remove it from bread flour without also removing B vitamins and other nutrients.
I think it’s best not to eat too much bread. But rather than any white bread I think I’d sooner eat real lactic-fermented sourdough wholemeal rye bread - like the healthy Swiss that Weston Price found. I’ll bet you the Scandinavians and Germans, who eat this sort of bread, are generally taller and with better teeth and bones than southern Europeans, who mostly eat white bread (and probably quick-rise at that these days).
Aug 16th, 2009 at 5:50 am
Interesting article that I learned a good deal from. Thanks for posting it!