Our daily bread

Reporter: Helen Wellings
Broadcast Date: October 28, 2009

A new study on bread is enough to make you think twice about the type of loaf you buy and the number of slices you eat every day. According to the latest research, bread has a powerful impact on our health.

The world over, most people can't live without their bread - on average we eat four to six slices a day - but what's bread doing to our bodies, how healthy is it?

Dietician Susie Burrell, from the Westmead Childrens' Hospital, says our bread consumption can have a big impact on our lives.

"The key thing is that bread is one of the staple foods in our diet so the type we choose everyday has a significant impact on our health long term," Burrell said.

She compared the amount of kilojoules, fat, carbs, fibre and sodium in ten different breads.

"Kilojoules are crucial and hence the size of the bread is extremely important," Burell said. "Large slices, and they are getting larger in the supermarkets, they barely fit into the toaster."

She warns that a large slice of bread is actually equivalent to two slices of bread.

Lowest in kilojoules, is flat bread, plain white and wholemeal. A serve of two slices contains 600 kilojoules.

Wonder White contains 650 kilojoules, Helga's grain 860 kilojoules, soy and linseed and rye 900 kilojoules, Lawson's 1200 kilojoules and sourdough 1400 kilojoules.

The bread that contains the most kilojoules, equivalent to two Mars Bars, is Turkish bread at 2300 kilojoules. Just two slices is more than a quarter of our recommended intake of 6000 to 8000 kilojoules a day!

Says Burrell: "We should avoid it (Turkish bread) at all costs - it has so much white flour in it. You are getting nothing nutritionally, nothing of fibre, no key nutrients and it is so easy to overeat and of course all the butter drips in the holes as well."

Burrell also warns it's not just the kilojoules we should watch out for.

"But it's not just kilojoules, because alot of bread is highly processed, it's also low in fibre, high in carbohydrates with a high glycemic index or GI - not good for us."

Professor Jenni Brand-Miller, author of the low GI books, says a lot of breads are high GI and should be avoided.

"It gushes in and causes a big glucose spike. It means that it promotes fat accumulation in the liver, the blood and in the wrong spots around the body, abdominal, obesity," Brand-Miller said. "Some breads, most breads in fact, if they are wholemeal or white they have a high GI."

She recommends sourdough bread (if it's made by proper fermentation techniques), because it has a low GI. So too, do Burgen or grainy breads.

Burrell recommends much the same thing.

"Because white bread has been processed and then added fibre and nutrients, that never makes it as good as a grain bread. Now for a child, if they won't tolerate something that has a heavy grain in it, at least a light multigrain is a better choice and if they still won't have that at least a small slice of flat bread in a wholemeal variety is a better choice, better than white," Burrell said.