Health OK breads and baked goods....

Today's Post:  Friday, 9-14-2012

Most breads and baked goods today are between OK but for only some people and truly horrible by many important health standards.

People have been evolving for hundreds of thousands of years and only eating ANY grain foods for about 10,000 years.

So one solution that is advocated by many health writers is to simply eat no more grains at all.

That’s a considerable stretch to impossible for some people.  But the evidence I’ve seen says that for those who can do it, it can be a good solution.  Doing so does help people who are gluten sensitive or allergic to wheat.  And it can really help with fat loss for many people.

Personally, I’m an omnivore who prefers not to be totally limited and am not that I know of allergic to wheat or oats nor do I have problems with gluten.

In addition, the oatmeal I eat does help keep my LDL cholesterol below 100 and has some protein and B vitamins. (I eat rolled oats every other day as part of my breakfast.)

But what about breads and baked goods?

Are there any that can be health OK?

  >>>  I have new information that changes what I know of this answer from mostly no to actually more like yes for people who want to eat breads and to some extent baked goods!

(That news is just after the next 3 points.)

What is desirable in health criteria for breads and baked goods?

1.  They need to be low glycemic.

But foods made with refined grains are very high glycemic -- about 50% HIGHER than sugar!

This causes rebound hunger and blood sugar spikes and dramatically higher levels of triglycerides which are a marker of heart disease risk!

So eating foods made with refined grains helps cause type 2 diabetes, adding excess fat, and heart disease according to what we now know!  Most people still eat these foods for a big chunk of what they eat and are gradually made fat and sick by doing so!

So the first answer is to almost never eat foods made with refined grains. 

Since foods made of refined grains, mostly wheat, are so prevalent still, you really have to work at this one!

My wife and I order sandwiches and hamburgers occasionally but always with no bread.  And, we no longer have bread brought to us before dinner when we eat out or send it back. 

The only refined grains I eat are very occasionally desserts & only a few times a year!

100% whole grain foods are almost as bad for their glycemic effects but have enough greater nutritional value I part company with the zero grain people for some of those. 

Their added fiber makes them more filling and easier to lower their glycemic effects by eating them with lower glycemic foods also.

I did cut back from regular, not instant, oatmeal every morning to every other morning to help my fat loss which it did.

And, I cut back from one piece of 100 % whole grain bread in a half sandwich for my lunch to just 3 weekdays a week for the same reason.

2.  It’s desirable that the grain foods you eat not cause allergies or problems with the gluten in wheat and many other grains.

Eating many servings of grain foods every day makes these allergies more likely. 

And even the high yield wheat that went into common use many years ago is more likely to cause allergies than the original wheat did. (I got an email from two doctors who follow health effects of foods noting several changes in the high yield wheat that make it far more likely to cause allergies.)

Plus this has gotten far worse recently.  In recent years, over 90% of the wheat foods you buy from normal retail sources are made from GMO wheat.  GMO wheat contains pesticides and chemicals for herbicide resistance inside the wheat where it cannot be removed.  And, I’ve read this does make it more likely for the people who eat it to become allergic to all wheat.

So don’t buy any foods labeled as GMO foods.  Vote in favor of making labels showing the presence of GMO crops in your food.  And since virtually all refined grain foods made from wheat are now GMO foods, that’s another good reason to virtually NEVER eat any!

3.  Some people are already allergic to wheat or cannot eat gluten any more.

So for all those 3 reasons it would be great to have a way to make nutritious whole grain breads and baked goods with zero wheat, no or low gluten, and a very low glycemic rating.

I just found out that this is dramatically more doable than almost anyone now knows yesterday.

I’d been studying the use of the grain like food quinoa for some time.  But in an email yesterday for the best foods for people who need or want low glycemic foods, there were two blockbuster items included.

In glycemic index, zero is great.  But even 30 or so is quite low.  (Sugar is about 65 and refined grain breads are about 100 which is high and extremely high.)  30 to 60 is OK but not great and such foods should be eaten quite sparingly.

Lentils are the best bean or legume food for glycemic index and test as 20 to 30.

Here’s the blockbuster I found!

Quinoa has had its glycemic index tested. The article yesterday said it was tested and found to be 10!

That’s dramatically important news!

Since quinoa also has the most complete protein of any plant food known or very close to it and has no gluten, that makes using quinoa as a grain substitute go from being a good idea to being an incredibly great idea!

Sounds good but how well does quinoa work as a grain food in breads and baking? 

OK to good I recently found out.

I’d already found out that quinoa is easy to grow since it has a coating that tastes horrible to insects.  But since people don’t like that taste much either, quinoa has to be pre-soaked to remove that coating.  And, since it is cooked by heating it in water like rice or oatmeal are, it has to be precooked to get the fluffy grain like version to use in bread making or baking.

But then recently, I happened to see the woman in front of me in line at Whole Foods was buying quinoa.  So I asked her if she used it in her baking.  She did indeed.  She found it worked quite well in the nonglycemic baking she did.  In fact she found that a blend of up to two parts of quinoa to one part of nonglycemic buckwheat flour worked great.

But that same email that disclosed that quinoa has a glycemic rating of 10 also had a zero glycemic entry too!

Nuts and seeds tend to have a zero glycemic rating because of their high content of fiber and health OK oils and protein. 

They found that chia seed flour is now available and is an even lower glycemic way to make low glycemic baked goods.  But they had even more.  People who eat foods made with chia seed flour reported fat loss off their belly and lower blood sugar readings. Great news!

(In this category, I’d already learned that almond flour and pecan meal could be used in some foods to get similar effects.)

So health OK, very low glycemic, no gluten baked goods are now a doable kind of food.

Making a bread or making baked goods made with quinoa and chia seed flour and buckwheat flour such as the zero gluten version from Bob’s Red Mill is doable.

And, for times when you want something like carrot cake as a dessert, you can use a blend of quinoa, a buckwheat flour such as the zero gluten version from Bob’s Red Mill, and pecan meal if you or your family or guests aren’t allergic to tree nuts.

But these kinds of breads and baked goods for now still need to be home made or made by a personal chef or a specialty local baker of health OK foods for immediate pickup or same day delivery.

Here’s why:

It’s essential that foods made from grains have zero use of hydrogenated oils as an ingredient.

Hydrogenated oils, as we covered in our last post, are heart attack starters!  Worse, if you eat any of them more than once a month they build up to dangerous levels in your body because your body takes weeks to just get rid of half what you take in of hydrogenated oils.

But hydrogenated oils are still in the vast majority of commercially made baked goods, desserts, and package snacks and many other kinds of foods.  To protect your health, it’s best to never buy or eat them!

Hydrogenated oils are far cheaper than butter let alone butter from only naturally fed cows.

AND, foods made with hydrogenated oils have a safe shelf life of weeks or even months.

Back when baked goods were NOT made with hydrogenated oils, day old bread and baked goods were sold for a massive discount and those that didn’t sell right away were just tossed out!

But home and specialty cooks making breads or baked goods for consumption right away can use butter from cows fed only grass or natural foods instead.  Kerry Gold butter from Ireland and available at Whole Foods is said to be such a butter.

This not only avoids hydrogenated oils it avoids the horribly excessive omega 6 oils, bioconcentrated pesticides and herbicides in butter from cows fed GMO corn!

You can also, in some recipes, substitute a mild extra virgin olive oil or coconut oil or even unsweetened applesauce instead of butter.

I once had a baker make some oat bran muffins using olive oil and unsweetened applesauce  that were quite good.

But each of these variations demands a willing home cook or a specialty local cook or chef willing to cook that way.

That’s good news in 3 ways, however.

You can make health OK breads and baked goods.  (Although with baked goods that contain real sugar they should be occasional treats only even made in this way.)

It is enough extra work to do that you automatically tend to eat these foods less than most people now eat of refined grain foods.

People who really want to both eat in a health supporting and nonfattening way AND still eat breads and baked goods now have really good ways to do it that were not known or used before!