Week 12
Do you remember when there was a big hoopla about Subway using a substance that contained plastic in their bread? If you don’t the substance is called Azodicarbonamide. According the EWG or Environmental Working Group this substance is found in more than 500 food items and 130 brands of bread including a favorite I used to eat daily, bagels. Before being diagnosed with ulcerative proctitis I thought I was mindful of what was in my food. Now that I am delving deeper into the paleo diet and what I am putting into my son’s body, I realize there is so much more to food and food processes, especially baking. I rarely eat what I bake, but when I do I want to make sure it’s not going to immediately make me run to the porcelain god. For me, I don’t think it’s necessarily a gluten issue that upsets my digestion. I think it’s all the ingredients that I can no longer pronounce in the ingredients list when I buy bread from the store. Take a look at the ingredients in my homemade bagels versus the store brand bagels.
Ingredient Comparison
Store brand bagels:
Enriched flour [wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin,iron, thiamin mononitrate (vitamin b1), riboflavin (vitamin b2), folic acid], water, high fructose corn syrup. Contains 2% or less of each of the following: salt, yeast, calcium propionate and potassium sorbate (preservatives), Distilled vinegar, dough conditioners (mono- and diglycerides, ascorbic acid, azodicarbonamide, enzymes), calcium sulfate, xanthan gum, rice flour, yellow corn meal, soy lecithin, soy flour
The Breakdown
So let’s break down the ingredients in store bought bagels because if you’re like me you’re probably scratching your head and going how do you even pronounce those words?
Enriched Flour – It’s pretty self explanatory. The process of breaking down the wheat is so intensive that the minerals and vitamins originally in wheat are demolished. So they add them back in. The first two paragraphs of this Popsugar article does a pretty good job of explaining the flour process.
High Fructose Corn Syrup – Is highly processed corn. The syrup is made up of a lot of chains of glucose (in other words sugar). It also has fructose in it, which is sweeter then glucose. Here is a lengthy and scientific explanation of how to make high fructose corn syrup at Fooducate. I will let you decide whether or not this is something you want to put in your body.
Yeast – A small tidbit about yeast. Some bakers who want to be true to only baking real bread argue that even yeast in it’s instant form is bad for you. When people baked before instant yeast was invented it was with wild yeast like sourdough. There are arguments for and against both. I think yeast at this point is the least of our worries.
Calcium Propionate – Now this is an interesting ingredient! Even though this ingredient has been approved by the FDA to use in food it has not been sufficiently tested to determine it’s safety for human consumption. It is an additive that prevents mold and bacterial growth. Although that’s a good benefit I’m pretty sure, at least in my house, if there’s bread it never lasts that long to begin with. Again, it’s another ingredient that is greatly debated. Verywell.com claims there aren’t enough studies to determine if it is harmful to humans. Although they do cite a study done on rats were given “massive amounts of calcium propionate” and resulted decreased growth rates. Another website yourhealthremedy.com also states that there is not enough studies to support that calcium propionate is necessarily bad for human health, but they do claim that there is a study (although not cited) that the additive affects the digestive system. Calcium propionate is made from propanoic acid, which is another form of the additive used in breads. Although sites like the European Food Safety Authority have re-evaluated the these additives they are still deemed safe as the average diet doesn’t consume enough to have significant impacts.
Potassium Sorbate – This additive can occur naturally but anything that is an additive in bread is made synthetically. Potassium sorbate is another mold growth inhibitor. Potassium sorbate is also commonly used in skin care ingredients. It’s been known to cause irritations on the skin, in the eye and our respiratory system. Interesting… Check out these websites for more specifics. www.fooducate.com and the www.ewg.org.
Dough Conditioners:
Dough conditioners are used to basically make the process of making bread faster. Let me just say bread is not supposed to be a fast food. The process is important to the quality of the bread.
Mono- and Diglycerides – Seriously was stunned by this one! First of all these additives help extend shelf life by helping fats and water bond. It can basically be called a trans fat. Yup, those fats that apparently are really bad for your cholesterol that companies are supposed to label. Well apparently when in this form they don’t have to. Check it out at livestrong.com or foodbabe.com or just type it into google and do the research for yourself.
Azodicarbonamide – It is a basically used to formed bubbles in substances like vinyl, plastic and synthetic leather to give the materials a springy and no slip surface. It’s why they call it the yoga mat chemical. As a food additive it’s used as a bleaching agent and to make bread more airy. For more information you can refer to theses sites which will lead to even more information. www.ewg.org and www.wikipedia.org
Really? Do I need to go on? No. I wouldn’t in the store if I saw all these ingredients. I wouldn’t even read the last of the ingredients because it’s not going to make a difference. After seeing the enriched flour I would have put the store brand bagels back on the shelf. I know that enriched flour has no nutritional value naturally. So why would I want to put calcium propionate and azodicarbonamide in my body too.
I know that the FDA says that the amount of these additives is an insignificant amount to do any harm to our bodies on an average adult diet. Do they know what an average adult diet really is anymore? If adults are eating bagels like this every day for 20 years and we haven’t done any significant study on the affects what can we really conclude? I just think over that amount of time there has to be some sort of impact on our bodies since these are not natural materials. I feel traces are left behind somewhere as these substances take a long time to break down outside of our bodies. I’m pretty sure I have had the same yoga mat for 10 years now and it’s still in really good condition.
The Mindful Part
The process of making bread, bread from scratch, is enlightening to say the least. I actually really enjoy watching the sponge rise. I love feeling the heat from the sponge on my hand knowing that the process is working. It’s gratifying to watch the bubbles form on the top of the sponge only to pop a couple seconds later. It’s like living organism right in my kitchen and a cool science experiment I can eventually teach my son. The process is so important because that’s where the lessons are learned. I rarely learn a lesson from the result, especially if I am rushing and not being attentive to the process. We are so wrapped up in the rush to get the result we often forget how we got there.
I often hear that people don’t have time to make bread. I sometimes wonder what’s more important. Is good healthy food or watching TV more important? I used to watch about 2-3 hours of TV a night. It was my escape, but it wasn’t changing anything about my body or mental state. I think it actually made me more depressed seeing all these folks having a fun and I was just sitting on my couch. I had to give it up and really be productive again to feel any sort of gratification. I had always wanted to be a decent baker. Once I started I realized breads really didn’t take all that much time. There’s a lot of lag time. An hour here and hour there, where you just set a timer and wait for the bread to rise or rest or set-up overnight. I set my timer and go do other things.
I know it’s easier to buy food prepackaged from the grocery store because you’re running around town like a chicken with it’s head cut-off running all your errands. I definitely do it too. But food is important. It’s your lifeline and you can’t survive without it! We know that people die sooner who don’t eat right, yet we still don’t take the time to eat a proper meal. And that fact, in the previous sentence, makes me fully aware that I need to slow my life down. Why do I need to be running all over the place trying to do anything to fill up my calendar or our kids calendar? I have yet to find an answer. All I know is that food is important for my family to get together in one place, for my condition and just to learn and keep my brain active. Food is now one of the number one priorities on my calendar and I take the time to read ingredients if I am buying packaged food. Lastly, food just taste better homemade, especially baked goods! Oh man those bagels were delicious.
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The second recipe that I have now accomplished from the cookbook “The Bread Bakers Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread,” by Peter Reinhart is Greek celebration bread. I don’t know if the bread originally was from Greece as I didn’t read the back story, but if it does I have to say they make amazing bread! It reminded me of Christmas. The flavors are warm with cinnamon, cloves and all spice. It’s also semi-sweet with honey mixed in the recipe. More could be said about the taste, but the shape is amazing as well.
K&H Craft 