We have bred wheat to produce high yields in intensive growing conditions with scant regard for its nutritional quality; modern varieties have 30-50 per cent fewer minerals than traditional ones. Fast roller milling separates grain into its constituent parts so effectively that white flour has up to 88 per cent less of a range of minerals and vitamins than whole wheat. A recent study showed that organic stoneground flour had 50 per cent more magnesium and 46 per cent more zinc than chemically grown roller-milled flour.
The changes to baking have been equally drastic. The Chorleywood Bread Process, invented in 1961, uses intense energy, chemical additives and large amounts of yeast to produce loaves in a very short time. Nearly all the bread eaten in Britain is made by this method or one that uses similar additives. If dough is not allowed to ferment for several hours, there is little chance for natural bacteria to destroy harmful elements in the dough and to make important nutrients available to the human body.
Worse still, enzymes, often genetically modified, are added to flour and dough to make loaves bigger and keep them squishy for days, if not weeks, after baking. But most troubling of all, recent research suggests that one enzyme, transglutaminase, used in food manufacturing and baking, may actually turn some of the gliadin protein in wheat flour into a form that can be toxic to some people. Even the organic loaves made by the industrial bakers can contain this stuff
The industry is keen to sell us 'premium' loaves with fashionable additions of omega-3, inulin, folic acid and the like. But if we don't attend to the innate quality of our wheat and flour, our diet will consist of little more than nutrified industrial slop.
The relatively affluent may be able to afford a broad diet, but poorer people depend disproportionately on bread. For them, especially, it matters that every slice is as good as possible
Andrew Whitley The Observer, Sunday 17 September 2006