Yet there are problems with speeding up whole-grain bread, and they begin with the flour. Many if not most of the new whole-grain white breads on the market are made with a new variety of hard white wheat developed by ConAgra. This is why the bread doesn't look like whole wheat: the specks of bran are white, or whitish. They are also microscopic: The wheat is milled by ConAgra using a patented process called Ultrafine that attains a degree of fineness never before achieved in a whole-grain flour. This resulting flour, called Ultragrain, makes for a softer, whiter whole-grain bread, but at a price. It is metabolized almost as fast as white flour, obviating one of the most important health advantages of whole grains: that our bodies absorb and metabolize them slowly, and so avoid the insulin spikes that typically accompany refined carbohydrates. A common measure of the speed by which a food raises glucose levels in the blood {and therefore insulin, an important risk factor for many chronic diseases} is the glycemic index. The glycemic index of a whole-grain Wonder Bread {around 71} is essentially the same as that of Classic Wonderbread {73}. {By comparison, the glycemic index of whole-grain bread made with stone-ground flour is only 52.} So perhaps we really have gotten too smart for our own good. Using
( Michael Pollan )
[ Cooked: A Natural History of ]
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