Bread is a dietary staple, and lately consumers have been demanding not only higher quality but also healthier ingredients . In this sense, a commonly accepted idea that whole wheat bread (made from unrefined flours) is better than white (with refined flours). Sure?
A group of scientists from the Weizman Institute in Israel have done an experiment to support or banish prejudice. The researchers divided the volunteers into two groups: one of them increased their consumption of white bread for a week – it provided them with 25% of their calories – while the rest did the same, but with products made from whole wheat . They then went two weeks without tasting the bread and repeated the process, swapping diets.
Before and during the trial, experts from the Weizman Institute measured several biochemical markers : levels of glucose, minerals, cholesterol, kidney and liver enzymes, or parameters that indicate inflammation or tissue damage. And the result, published in the journal Cell Metabolism, was that diet changes did not significantly alter any of these values .
But they also made an important discovery: that half of the study participants responded better, from the point of view of glucose levels, to white bread and the other half to whole wheat. In other words, each person reacts in a different way and that nutritional values do not apply equally , as is usually the case.
With the data obtained, the experts have created an algorithm capable of predicting how the type of bread that we incorporate into the diet affects individually, which opens the door to a kind of scientifically personalized menus .
