It just takes a few additives for bread to be considered ultra-processed

Bread Can Be a Sneaky Ultra-Processed Food—Here’s How to Pick the Healthiest One Here's how to pick a healthier loaf

• Increasing research shows the negative health impacts of ultra-processed foods, heavily manufactured products packed with harmful additives.
• Yet, ultra-processed foods account for more than 73% of the U.S. food supply, and bread often falls into the category.
• Experts offered tips to find the least processed bread, like sticking to whole wheat and looking out for foreign ingredients.

Most people know they should avoid ultra-processed foods—a growing body of research has tied them with a slew of serious health conditions, including dementia, cardiovascular disease, and some cancers. 

But this category is broad, with data suggesting that more than 73% of the U.S. food supply is ultra-processed. 

Some of these items are obvious—think hot dogs, bright-colored candy, and other traditional junk food—while others aren’t typically thought of as overly processed. Perhaps chief among them? Many of the breads that line grocery store shelves. 

Bread is often a pantry staple that’s hard to avoid buying—posing a conundrum for those trying to limit ultra-processed foods this year.

So, what should you keep in mind when attempting to find less-processed bread options? And what qualifies as an ultra-processed bread, anyway? We’ve got you covered.

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Why Is Bread Sometimes Considered an Ultra-Processed Food?

Researchers often categorize foods by their level of processing under a classification system called the NOVA scale. Under the NOVA scale, foods fall into these four main camps:

• Unprocessed or minimally processed: These foods are either in their natural state or are barely altered. They include things like avocados, milk, and apples.
• Processed culinary ingredients: These items have undergone minimal processing, like pressing, refining, grinding, or milling. Almond flour and olive oil fall into this category.
• Processed foods: These foods have been changed from their natural state and often have sugar, oil, salt, or other substances added. They can include canned tuna and some cheeses.
• Ultra-processed foods: These foods are processed and contain additional ingredients like artificial colors and flavors, preservatives, and other ingredients to preserve their texture. Many ultra-processed foods are packaged.

At baseline, bread falls into the processed food category, given that it usually contains flour, salt, sugar, yeast, and water. But sometimes bread can tip into the ultra-processed food camp, and it doesn’t take much to make that shift.

“The moment you have certain types of additives in the bread, it suddenly becomes ultra-processed,” Giles Yeo, PhD, an ultra-processed foods researcher and professor of molecular neuroendocrinology at the University of Cambridge, told Health.

Those additives can include high fructose corn syrup, emulsifiers, stabilizers, and preservatives, Lu Wang, MBBS, PhD, MPH, an epidemiologist and research assistant professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, told Health. 

They’re there to enhance taste and texture and help make bread shelf-stable—meaning it can hang out on store shelves for a few days without going stale or bad.

To be sure, though, there is some controversy around classifying a staple food like bread as ultra-processed.

Yeo said that while bread with certain ingredients technically fits in the ultra-processed category, “it’s a very different beast from a reconstituted meat” and shouldn’t be classified as ultra-processed. “‘Ultra-processed’ is too broad a category,” he added.

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How to Tell If a Bread Is Ultra-Processed—and Other Factors to Consider For Health

The best way to tell if bread is ultra-processed is to read the ingredients list, Samantha Snashall, RDN, a nutritionist at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, told Health. “The longer the list and the more foreign the word, the more ultra-processed it most likely is,” she said.

Bakery bread is usually not ultra-processed, said Morgan Dickison, RD, a nutritionist at Weill Cornell Medicine. “If you think about getting bread in the morning and it’s stale by dinner, that is likely not ultra-processed,” she told Health. “The problem is, it’s not shelf-stable.”

But when it comes to health, there are other considerations aside from the length and indecipherability of the ingredient list. A big one is the type of grain used to make the bread. 

Whole grains contain all parts of the plant’s whole seed, or the kernel, in its natural form. Because of this, they include more fiber, vitamins, and minerals than refined grains, such as white flour, which have some parts removed. As such, Wang recommends looking for bread made with one or multiple whole grains that top the ingredient list. You might see whole-grain flour, oats, or whole wheat.

It’s especially important to examine the ingredients instead of simply relying on packaging terms like “whole wheat,” Shashall stressed, because these marketing labels aren’t always accurate. “Just because it says ‘wheat’ or ‘whole wheat’ doesn’t necessarily mean it 100% actually is,” she said.

When choosing between a whole wheat, ultra-processed bread, and a less-processed white bread, Yeo recommends considering your goals. If, for example, you’re trying to maintain stable blood sugar levels, the wheat bread may be a better option. “With white bread, there is more fiber ripped out of it,” Yeo said. “That will impact glucose levels.”

But if the whole wheat bread contains a lot of sugar, like a honey whole wheat bread, that would also be something to consider, Snashall pointed out.

Ultimately, it may not always be possible or even preferable to avoid ultra-processed bread—and that’s not something to be too alarmed about, Dickinson said. “Ultra-processed foods are so prevalent in our food system,” she said. “Just do your best.”

Edited by Health with a background in health, science, and investigative reporting. Previously, she wrote full time about parenting issues for the app Parent Lab. Before that, she worked as a reporter for National Geographic covering wildlife crime and exploitation." tabindex="0" data-inline-tooltip="true"> Jani Hall Jani Hall Jani Hall is a news editor for Health with a background in health, science, and investigative reporting. Previously, she wrote full time about parenting issues for the app Parent Lab. Before that, she worked as a reporter for National Geographic covering wildlife crime and exploitation. learn more

This story originally appeared on: Health News - Author:Korin Miller