Is any bread truly safe?

Four breads and a freezer.

That was the week. Here it is on one page, in the order I would want it if I were reading this cold.

This week's rules

✓

Judge a loaf by its ingredient list, never by the word on the front.

✓

Whole wheat is a better loaf. It is not a slower one.

✓

Slice and freeze on the day you buy it. Thaw, then toast.

✓

Divide carbohydrate by fiber on the panel. Ten or lower is the loaf you want.

✓

Real sourdough is flour, water, salt and a starter. Nothing else needs to be in there.

The scoreboard

Every bread I tested this week, matched to the same carbohydrate, eaten alone on an empty stomach.

🍞 White bread, fresh +71

🍞 Whole wheat +70

🍞 Supermarket "sourdough" +68

🥖 Real bakery sourdough +51

🧊 White bread, frozen and toasted +43

This is one person's experiment, not medical advice. Everyone's body responds differently.

Read that list from the top and the shape of the week is right there.

Three loaves I was told to worry about, one I was told to buy, and one I fixed with a freezer.

Now look at the bottom row again…

The cheapest bread on the list, handled properly, beat every other loaf including the one I drove across town for on Saturday.

That is the finding of the week. And it cost nothing.

It also reorders the shopping. I spent Saturday morning driving for a loaf, and Tuesday evening putting bread in a freezer, and the freezer won.

So, is any bread truly safe?

No.

And I want to be careful with that word, because safe is doing a lot of work in the way people use it online.

Every bread on that list raised my blood sugar. The best one still put me up forty three points.

Bread is flour. Flour is starch. And starch is glucose with a few extra steps.

What changes between loaves is how fast it arrives. Not whether it arrives.

In other words, every loaf on that scoreboard sends the same sugar into your blood. They differ in how fast it gets there.

That sounds bleak written down. It is the opposite.

A food you cannot change is a rule you have to obey. A food whose speed you can change is a dial, and this week was mostly about finding the dial.

So the honest answer is that there is no safe bread. There are faster loaves and slower loaves, and a handful of things you can do to any of them.

Which is more useful than a safe list… because a safe list would be out of date by next year, and you would have no idea why.

Reader mail

Question

I have eaten two slices of whole wheat toast every morning for years because I thought I was doing the right thing. After Wednesday, do I need to stop?

My answer

Good question, and no. I would not take that loaf away from you on the strength of one number.

What Wednesday showed is narrow. Whole wheat did almost nothing for my spike against white. That is one measurement, of one thing, in one person.

But the bran and germ in that loaf carry fiber, magnesium and B vitamins that white flour had taken out. And the long term work on whole grains and heart disease is among the steadier findings in all of nutrition.

So keep the bread. Change the handling instead.

Slice it, freeze it, thaw it, toast it, and put something with protein or fat on top. That costs you nothing, and on my monitor it moved the number far more than switching flour ever did.

Next week

We leave the bread aisle.

🥣

Mon

Oatmeal with honey, on trial

🔧

Tue

Building a steadier bowl

🧠

Wed

Oatmeal vs cereal vs avocado toast

🔄

Thu

Instant oats vs steel cut

Oatmeal. The breakfast with the best reputation in the building, and a packet I suspect has been coasting on it for years.

One number now, because it sets up the whole week.

A review of the measured values put steel cut oats around 55 on the glycemic index, and instant oatmeal around 75.

Same grain. Same field. Different machine.

"There is no safe bread. There are faster loaves, slower loaves, and a freezer."

Thank you for a good week of mail. The bread questions were better than my answers, which is the right way round.

— Stay steady

This is one person's experiment with a glucose monitor, not medical advice. Everyone's body responds differently.

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One food. One monitor. One honest chart.