Veering off the usual technology/toys focus of my blog, I have a nutrition question. My wife and I are having a friendly debate over the relative healthiness of a couple of different breads. One of these breads is a traditional "whole wheat" loaf, and the other is one of the newer "whole grain white" loafs. I'm hoping some nutrition wizard out there can help settle the debate as to which is better for us to be eating. After the jump, you'll find the nutrition labels from each loaf. I'm curious as to whether or not one is clearly better than the other...
Here's how the two breads' labels compare, with one important modification. Bread #1 lists their serving size as one piece; Bread #2 lists theirs as two pieces. In order to make the numbers comparable, I divided all the values for Bread #2 by two to get the figures for one slice of bread.
| Bread #1 | Bread #2 | |
| Serving Size | 32g | 30g |
| Calories from Fat | 10g | 7.5g |
| Calories | 80 | 75 |
| Total Fat | 2% | 1.5% |
| Saturated Fat | 0% | 0% |
| Trans Fat | 0% | 0% |
| Polyunsaturated Fat | 0g | 1g |
| Monounsaturated Fat | 0g | 0g |
| Cholesterol | 0% | 0% |
| Sodium | 6% [150mg] | 6.5% [160mg] |
| Total Carbohydrates | 5% [14g] | 5.5% [17g] |
| Dietary Fiber | 8% [2g] | 12% [3g] |
| Sugars | 1g | 2.5g |
| Protein | 3g | 3g |
| Thiamin | 6% | 7.5% |
| Riboflavin | 2% | 5% |
| Calcium | 2% | 15% |
| Niacin | 6% | 5% |
| Iron | 4% | 15% |
| Folic Acid | 2% | 20% |
To my untrained eye, Bread #1 looks like it "wins" for Sodium, Total Carbohydrates, Sugars, and Niacin. The remaining categories are either ties, or go (sometimes by a wide margin) to Bread #2. In particular, Bread #2 has much higher values for Dietary Fiber, Calcium, Iron, and Folic Acid. So which is better--the lower sugar, salt, and carb levels in Bread #1, or the better nearly-everything-else values in Bread #2?
I can post the actual ingredients of both if that would be helpful. If/when I get any useful answers, I'll update this post with the brand name of each loaf. Thanks in advance for any info you can provide!
The ingredient list is important, the much higher fiber, folic acid, and calcium count is a red flag to me, as food producers can now put in an additives such as fiber that may not processed by your body the same way natural fiber is, Slate did a thing about the fiber additive a while back. Basically your question is one that is still up in the air I think, as to whether artificially fortified foods are better than their natural counterparts.
Apparently, part of what matters is the percent of whole grains it says it has, somewhere on the packaging. Higher is better. Weight Watchers website article says you're looking for 16 grams of whole grains in a serving. The amount of sugar in Bread 2 is a red light to me. Seems it might be more processed than Bread 1. According to Margaret Wittenberg in her book, "New Good Food", : Here's what to look for in breads:
Whole grain flour
A simple ingredients list with little more than flour, water, salt and a leavening agent
Preferably 2 to 3 grams of fiber per slice
Minimal sweeteners, preferable none.
Based on that, the sugar amount is the 'leavener' (pun intended); so I'd go with Bread 1.
The ingredient list is very important since alot of these numbers might not mean much. For example in the Daily Value of Iron companies are allowed to use very broad metrics to calculate how much Iron is included, when in fact only specific types of Iron are readily absorbable by the human body, so if the manufacturer
supplements' their white bread (that has maybe 1% DV of Iron) with 14% DV (or 3% DV if Bread 1 is the white bread) of iron that your body can only absorb 1% of, then the nutritionalfact' for Iron is useless.Also the amount of sodium these breads have shouldn't matter at all...most people only are affected by high levels of sodium when their intake is order of magnitude higher than this. Also, `winning' in the Carbs department by 0.5% is irrelevant, and although the ratio of sugars to carbs is higher in bread 2, it's not as large as it looks.
The bottom like is that Bread 2 clearly wins if most of the extra stuff isn't due to additives.
And, btw, Calories from Fat is usually not measured in grams...it's usually measured in Calories.
In any case, the differences aren't that large, and if you want to eat healthier the bread department isn't where you'll be making most of your important decisions (unless Wonder bread is still an option).
Whichever your wife says is better for you. Is better (in the long run)
Thou shall not prove your wife wrong, or you shall feel the wrath of a woman corrected.
Ishtar 3:16 (lost book of the bible... i think :)
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