Flour. It ain't what it used to be.

When we think of a food staple, the use of flour has to be right up there with things like nuts, seeds and berries, vegetables, and the seasonal fruit we all enjoy. Staple foods are always available in one form or another, and easily preserved, dried or ground for use. But flour is becoming more and more processed. Not simply harvested and milled anymore, our flour today is overly processed, bleached, and sometimes has anti-caking agents added to it etc...which makes it more ‘non-food-like’ as it goes on and on.

Processed goods in general are on the rise, and with it we see a global epidemic of ill-health, diabetes, obesity, allergies, syndromes etc. So what is the argument for this ‘staple’ food? Why is it becoming such a health issue? Didn’t our ancestors all eat some form of processed grain?

Yes, most of them did….worldwide. Wheat however, the most widely used grain for flour on the planet at the moment, was never the kind of wheat we have today. It wasn’t laden with pesticide and herbicide residue. When processed at the mill it wasn’t bleached. It was stone-ground and wholly organic in production. The ‘raw’ kind of quality it had was quite healthy and quite useful for the populations who ate it. Even in the poverty stricken times of the Industrial Revolution in Europe, most people survived on ‘bread’ and water alone for long periods of time simply because the nutritional value of wheat back then was superior to the over processed glupe we get enmass now.

My own Dad is one person who will refuse to pay more than around $2.00 for a loaf of white bread...rarely eats wholemeal, and is now a Type 1 Diabetic...regularly having to take notice of his blood sugar levels and he’s living the stress that goes along with this whole process. When I broach the subject of buying some stone-ground, wholemeal, organic, bread (which is superior and delicious) he flatly refuses to think it would do anything better than his doughy white rolls or loaves. Its hard to change habits of a lifetime, and its hard to believe that what we have always been told is false,...but that’s the hard truth one has to start deciphering.

On that ‘food pyramid’ we were all exposed to 30years ago, the top part of the pyramid was sugars and fats. The bottom part, grains, had the handy marketing booster for cereals and breads, snack items and packaged goods...but what was not mentioned was that the loaf of bread there was not really what was meant by ‘grains’. Whole grains, like seeds, nuts and pulses are extraordinarily good for you. Processed grains are less and less valuable to your body because they literally lose some of their ‘energy’, their goodness, their ‘nutritional value’, the more they are processed. When you also see that the recommended intake is 6 or more servings per day, you can see this is easily possible in today’s fast food culture where someone can actually have 3 to 5 servings per sitting of processed white flour.

For example: Someone may start with toast, muffins or cereal for breakfast, a pastry or biscuit for morning tea, a salad roll or piece of pizza for lunch, cake or a baked energy bar for afternoon tea, and pasta or rice for dinner,...followed perhaps by a dessert of processed flour like a pudding. Frankly, if you're eating all this flour how on earth can you have room for anything else!!! I'd be blown up like a balloon, rolling around with a stomach the size of a basket ball if I ate this much bread and cereal each day!

If that is the total intake of flour for someone, even if they only do this a couple of times a week, its still a huge amount of toxins that are entering the body, exclusively from food, and putting the body under considerable strain to process, and eliminate. On top of this, a body is being exposed to environmental pollutants that we ALL live with as well. Why would anyone want to compound their toxin intake and compromise their health this way?

Flour bleaching uses some of the following additives:

(Just more ‘food additives’ brought into our massive food industry. They are used to make freshly milled flour (usually creamy in colour or even yellow sometimes...remember how ‘golden’ wheat really IS) appear white. These additives also increase gluten development in the flours)

· Organic Peroxides (mostly benzoyl peroxide) - also used for making plastics and explosives, teeth whitening pastes and hair dye as well as acne treatment gels.

· Calcium Peroxide (E930) used because it releases oxygen when added to water, and for fertilizer as a soil improver.

· Nitrogen Peroxide - is a ’waste product’ in the industrial synthesis of nitric acid (of which millions of tons are produced each year) giving off a toxic reddish brown gas which is an known and prominent air pollutant.

· Chlorine– yep we all know this one easily, just drink some tapwater and presto! Chlorine. It’s a powerful disinfectant and used for this purpose in swimming pools ...which we aren’t supposed to drink….doesn’t make a lot of sense does it...

· Chlorine dioxide—research now indicates it developes diabetes-causing contaminant alloxan when it reacts with the proteins in flours..Its also used to bleach wood pulp and used as well in the treatment of municipal drinking water...

· Azodicarbonamide is used in the USA under regulation, but is banned in Australia and Europe because it is a respiratory sensitiser and is a possible cause of asthma, and as it reacts with some food dyes, it may also heighten allergic reactions with other foods. Currently Subway Restaurants, Dunkin Donuts and Panera Breads all use this food additive...which is also used in the production of plastics. YUM. NOT.

Making bread at home is the best option if you love to have a loaf or two per week. If not, go and buy the organic, wholemeal loaf from the grocers, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how delicious it is, and how good it is for you too :)


(photo courtesy of Bravenet customer services photo log)

If you’d like a failsafe bread recipe I have one! Easy, at home prep, with all the instructions. Once you try it you won’t go back to store bought bread and when you have bread at other people’s houses, you’ll be wistfully comparing it to that warm, crusty loaf you made last Saturday that just seemed like magic…

Leave a comment with your email details available to me and I'll send you The Simple Bread Recipe on pdf.

With beautiful baking aromas of warm crusty breads...
Jannette Tibbs
Holistic Therapist


(sources for food additives from Wikipedia - White Flour page,...yep it IS that easy to find out what you're getting poisoned with...)