5 reasons why you should reduce your bread consumption
Regular consumption of bread is harmful to the body. Here are the reasons why you should reduce your bread intake.
In Nigeria, bread is one of the most consumed foods all across the country. There are many meals that you can make with bread such as breakfast meals, bread and akara sandwich and many more. However, scientific reasons have made us believe that eating bread on a regular basis might not be as healthy as one thinks.
1. Increases blood sugar level
When you eat processed carbs, your blood sugar spikes, insulin surges, blood sugar crashes and you feel like sleeping, so you eat more carbs to bring yourself back up to consciousness.
2. Difficult to digest
When a grain is refined, the outermost and innermost layers of the grain are removed. This removes the fiber and some protein, leaving behind the starch. This lack of starch causes the bread to turn into a sticky, gluey mass when mixed with the digestive juice in the stomach. This stays in the system for long and causes a toxic build up in the body.
Bread also has lots of gluten which causes bloating, stool inconsistency, damage to the wall of the intestinal tract and tiredness.
3. Accelerates weight gain
Packaged and pre-sliced white bread contains only highly-processed, simple carbohydrate because all the refining removes all the healthy nutrients. It is also full of salt, refined sugar and preservatives. If you eat too much bread, it can make you put on loads of weight.
4. Contains anti-nutrients
Lectins and Phytates are toxins that are found in all grains and legumes that bind to certain nutrients (like iron, zinc, calcium and others) and can slow or inhibit your body’s ability to absorb those nutrients. Since bread is made of grains, it can be bad for your stomach, causing inflammation of the stomach lining, making it difficult to absorb nutrients in the foods we eat.
5. Might contain dangerous chemicals
Due to the different ways in which bread is made, there can be different flour treating agents to make the bread fluffy, soft and give it a good finish. Some of these agents can be dangerous to the body in the long run, such as potassium bromate, saccharine and iodate.