Question and poll - bread of life, or death?

[Eric The Viking]

What's all this about?
I had a bit of a surprise earlier in the week: My GP is on about my blood pressure again, and the matter is complicated because of the drugs I'm on, etc. I already take the maximum of blood pressure medication, so have been casting about for other reasons why it's still going up.

I thought we have a good diet: we cook for ourselves, with fresh veg or salad every evening. We use hardly any salt as seasoning. We don't eat a lot of fatty foods, neither of us is overweight, and we get reasonable exercise. But my wife buys wholemeal (or whole grain) bread, usually whatever's discounted by Asda from the day before - we get tasty bread but cheaply. I have two or three rounds of toast in the morning, and two rounds at lunch as a sandwich.

Recently I've noticed it tastes distinctly salty. I don't even have to bite into it - just licking the crust of a piece of my morning toast is noticeably salty.

So I looked at the bag it came in: One slice: 400mg of salt!. The USA's recommended daily salt intake is 2.4g, and thus my usual diet is close on 5/6 of normal in bread alone. There's probably quite enough in other common foods (olive spread, and smoked ham, for example), for me to be almost always over the limit.

I'm genuinely shocked at how much salt is used in "whole grain" breads. I thought they were better for me than the normal "cardboard", but now I find they may be killing me!

I know I need to change my diet, but, since my better half is teasing me about how much bread I eat, I thought I'd do an unscientific poll to find out whether I'm a greedy bread-loving freak, or more normal...

E.

PS: The poll is a bit crude, please select the options that make the most sense. Thanks.

 

[Sporky McGuffin]

Wholemeal, but I mostly eat white because that's what Lady Bertie McHobnobs bakes from scratch several times a week. And the white she bakes is very different from shop bread - definitely less salty, much tastier and a nicer texture.

 

[Steve Maskery]

I bake my own bread, about 1/3 granary, 1/3 wholemeal, 1/3 white.
A 500g (of flour) loaf will have about 1 Tablespoon of salt in it. It gives the bread structure, it's not just for flavour, so 400mg/slice does not surprise me.

I also cook properly, I might have a bought pizza once or twice a month, but otherwise everything is cooked from scratch, I enjoy doing so. You won't find junk food in my fridge or freezer. I do use salt to season, but not much. I certainly don't cover my dinner with salt on the plate, like my dad used to.

I also take BP tablets...

 

[Phil Pascoe]

As above - bake your own. It's not difficult.

 

[CHJ]

Having followed the finance manager in calorie counting this year using myfitness pal as an introduction to her getting more familiar with her new computer and a rough guide to what we were consuming we were very surprised to see how many calories we were exposed to in the crusty bread rolls, sandwiches and the odd Bears Claw Danish in the snacks between main meals, (almost a full roast dinners worth) it was not only the calorie count of a large slice of bread but the other intakes such as salt in some of the 'tastier' brands that surprised us too.

And as others say above a reversion to home production that was the norm for many years.

Although salt intake has not been the priority in our reducing the bread intake along with the pastas etc. to reduce the carbs, something not eased by the smell of freshly baked bread, it has dropped the excess baggage carried around by me by some 12 kilos so far, and the mixed joys of being able to justify a new wardrobe of 'going out' clothing.

 

[mseries]

Homemade sourdough using homemade starter. One loaf per week for my sandwiches at work divided up over four days, 7g of salt added per loaf according to Mrs MSeries who makes it for me. Mass produced bread contains other enemies that have no place in food, ours contains only salt, flour water and the starter (which is homemade from flour and water ONLY). PM me if you want details on how to make the starter and the bread.

 

[Beau]

Much like the others I make our own but the Lazy way in a bread machine. I have made it with no salt and it is much the same but not quite as tasty. Personal fave is 50/50 wholemeal and white but often try other flours with extra seeds.

At least 4 chunky slices a day yum.

 

[woodpig]

We have a Panasonic Bread Maker which turns out lovely bread. You can add as little or as much salt as you like. I prefer white bread but often add Sesame or Poppy seeds to the mix.

 

[thick_mike]

I bake my own, started in January and I've only bought one loaf this year. Usually 1 loaf a week. 500g flour, 1tsp yeast, 1 1/2 tsp salt, 2tsp olive oil, 300g water. I used to use a Panasonic bread maker, but it wasn't quite crusty enough...so it's made by hand now.

Sometimes I use 50:50 granary:white flour.

 

[JakeS]

Commercial bread is usually salty not just for culinary reasons but also as a preservative. Try making your own bread, and then time how long it takes to go stale compared to a bought loaf. If you can resist eating it. The downside of that longevity is saltiness and a propensity to go mouldy rather than drying out like real bread does.

We used to make our own bread (I'm recently diagnosed probably-coeliac so we've not been doing so much lately) and it definitely had less salt in. Never liked bread-maker bread, though, always seemed a bit plastic - like gluten-free breads do, actually. Hmmmm...

I'd recommend a planetary mixer - Kenwood Chef or similar. We did all our bread with ours, including an excellent 60-minute ciabatta recipe, pizza, etc.

 

[lurker]

There's more to raised bp than salt.
Although its good to cut it out as far as you can, as you have found its a big additive
If you are on lots of drugs I would find a good pharmacy ..... Not boots!
And ask the pharmacist what they think of your total prescriptions
Choose a quiet time.
GPs are not that good at seeing drug conflicts, pharmacists know far far more about drugs than gps !
It might be an idea not to tell your gp though :wink:

Get them to do your bp too. You might get a pleasant surprise!

 

[gregmcateer]

I like all sorts, but as a general rule, avoid eating bread too often - probably once or twice a week.
I know it's gone all trendy to knock carbs, but unless we're actually doing something truly active, we eat far more than we need. Everyone calls me skinny coz I don't have a muffin top at 47, or say "you're lucky coz you don't put on weight" - I do, of course, but try to be sensible so I stay healthy as long as possible.
Sorry if teaching egg-sucking!
Greg

 

[JakeS]

GPs are not that good at seeing drug conflicts, pharmacists know far far more about drugs than gps !

What I've heard from pretty much every member of the medical profession I've spoken to outside of general practitioners is that you could have stopped that sentence after five words...

To be fair I've seen a fair few excellent GPs, but their main job seems to be to filter out the whiners and the trivial issues and point everyone else at the correct person who knows more than they do about subject X!




Speaking of blood pressure, though - it's also an observed phenomenon that a lot of people register a much higher blood pressure in the presence of a doctor than they actually have. Look up "white coat syndrome" or "white coat hypertension"! Just in case you haven't tried it already, it's worth getting one of the blood pressure machines yourself (you can get them from most pharmacists and some supermarkets) and measure your own at home once or twice a day for a few weeks. (There's some stuff about times before or after eating, I forget when the best time to do it is, but I seem to recall reading this stuff in the manual for the machine.) When I did this I found my blood pressure much better nearly all the time, then worse again next time I was at the doctor's. A quick test of their machine versus mine confirmed that mine was working fine and I was measuring it correctly and everything - and now they don't want to give me even more tablets.

 

[RobinBHM]

Just to clarify, I think the recommended daily salt intake is 6g which is equal to 2.4g sodium.

Some ingredients lists, especially ready made meal ones, list sodium content to make the salt content seem less.

I have 2 slices of bread in sandwiches for lunch monday to friday. I love toast, but it isnt a very healthy breakfast option. I now have homemade meusli and swap to porridge in the winter. I think oats are far more healthy than wheat.

My MIL is caeliac, taking gluten out of wheat products doesnt do much for flavour or texture!

 

[JakeS]

Some ingredients lists, especially ready made meal ones, list sodium content to make the salt content seem less.

From what I recall (I work in food industry software) the only mandatory nutritional declarations are energy, protein, carbohydrate and fat, called "the big 4" or "the top 4". The "top 8" add sugars, saturated fats, fibre and... sodium. It's sodium which supposedly increases your blood pressure, so that's the bit which is metered.

It does have the effect that a lot of people miss the distinction, of course. It's made worse that salt is recommended for front-of-pack reference intakes, which aren't even a mandatory part of food labelling (although every major supermarket requires them for own-brand products).



(I'm sure EtV already knows this, but for the benefit of anyone else: Sodium has an atomic weight of 23 and Chlorine 35 (so NaCl has a weight of 58), so 1 gram of salt is (23/58)*1 = 0.4 grams of sodium, and 1 gram of sodium is equivalent for this purpose to (58/23)*1 = 2.5g of salt.)

My MIL is caeliac, taking gluten out of wheat products doesnt do much for flavour or texture!

Off-topic, but - tell me about it! It doesn't help that a lot of manufacturers seem to adopt an approach of "let's tick as many free-from boxes as possible all at once", and so a lot of "gluten free" products are also "yeast free" and "dairy free" and "egg free" and so on... and others are really aimed at the caveman-diet-cult people and exclude a load of other modern ingredients instead. The small part of the market that just concentrates on making meals which just don't have any gluten in and are otherwise 'normal' for some reason tastes a lot better!


(Also I can't answer the poll because there isn't a "I prefer not to eat bread at all for some lunatic reason" option. ;-))

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I use stoneground wholemeal cut 50/50 with white, sometimes with rye flakes, poppy seed, sunflower seed and sesame seed as well. Oats are good, but make the bread heavier. I'm diabetic, so the lower GI is better. The wholemeal is harder and slower to digest, so I find I eat less (of other things) as well. Pay the money and buy decent flour (and I don't mean Allinson's ) - it's worth it.
Don't waste time and flour baking straight wholemeal - if it's a good flour it'll be like eating bread made from sawdust. A nice change is to use some garlic and a carton of passata instead of water per two loaves.

 

[morfa]

No option for no bread? But when I do eat it, it's normally a couple of slices at the weekend. And it's brown/whole grain. Modern bread is surprisingly quite bad for you, especially if it's white.

 

[WoodMangler]

I eat white bread, but it's made by my wife - much tastier than any shop-bought stuff.

As for the 'salty taste' thing - make sure you're drinking enough water. I went to the doc with that symptom last year, turned out I was just somewhat dehydrated.

 

[RogerS]

.....

...... taking gluten out of wheat products doesnt do much for flavour or texture!

You can't do it. There is always something left. Much better to use a true gluten-free flour from something that never contains gluten in the first place. You also need to watch out for guar gum and xanthan gum, soya and derivatives plus a whole slew of other stuff that many coeliacs aren't aware that they also might be sensitive to.

ETV...you don't mention alcohol? Also what's your vitamin B levels like? If too low then that can affect BP.

Regarding drug interactions, I do have a copy of the BNF (no, not the British National Front) but I'm guessing so does your missus.

 

[Eric The Viking]

I trust my doctors, including the one I'm married to (although asking personal medical questions is way too risky on that front!).

I'm not sure why my blood pressure is high, but it has been creeping up over several years. I hadn't realised the salt proportion of bread until recently, hence the thread in the first place. The US FDA's recommendation for Sodium is just over 3g/day, which would explain why the UK says 6g of Salt (Sodium Chloride), ratio of 23:35 by atomic mass, Sodium:Chlorine.

I'm a moderate drinker, often go weeks without any at all, sometimes 10+ units/week (quite unusual). Thankfully, I don't seem to have addictive tendencies in that regard. I am very, very slightly overweight compared to my weight in my twenties.

Prescribed drugs? A cocktail of interesting stuff I won't go into here, but they're necessary to (a) continue being alive, and (b) function reasonably normally. Both GP and consultant are aware of the risk of conflicts; each knows what the other prescribes/recommends, and it's kept an eye on. The trouble is that almost everything in the BNF is listed as raising blood pressure or has other nasty side-effects.

So I intend to experiment by cutting back on bread, and improving my exercise regime in the first instance. Oh and cutting back on sugar a bit (do like it in coffee).

I'll collate the poll results at the end of next week - the more entries the better.

E.