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Comment by Kirby64 | Hacker News Reader

Nova makes this distinction already. “Freshly made” bread is considered category 3 (processed). That said, what distinguishes supermarket bread from freshly made bread?

Literally the only difference is typically some sort of preservatives, some added vitamins, and possibly a dough conditioner.

In general, bread is just not that healthy if you make the fluffy white kind. The preservatives and slicing have little to do with it. If anything, the added vitamins may make it healthier than something you make at home.

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The biggest nutritional change in bread in what type of flour is used (and if any other grains/seeds are used). The bran and germ of the wheat berry contain a decent part of it's nutritional value in protein, fat and insoluble fiber. The more refined a flour is the less of those parts it contains. Even unbleached white flour naturally has a decent micro-nutrient profile of vitamins from the endosperm.

What really sets apart the typical white flour seen in most processed products in the US is the bleaching process, which mostly serves to make the flour more visually appealing. It also destroys a large percentage of the micro-nutrients. For many flour products the added vitamins you mention are added back in making the flour "enriched", but really this is just trying to match the nutrient profile of unbleached white flour. It's unlikely the added vitamins you see in the nutrition label alone would make a bagged, commercial pan loaf healthier than even the equivalent you would make at home.

Lack of whatever mythical micro-nutrition you speak of in bleached white flour is not going to meaningfully make any difference in folks dietary outcomes. It's certainly not what is making people fat, or what is making them crave to eat too much bread.

the root cause, at least for bread, is pretty simple; US supermarket bread has a lot more sugar than freshly baked bread, because sugar is a preservative.

You’d be wrong about that, though.

Wonder bread white has 140 calories, 1.5g of fat, 5g of protein, and 29g of carbs for two slices. 5g of claimed added sugar.

In comparison, a recipe I’ve used to make very good white bread (the zojirushi recipe for their bread maker, for reference) has, for an equivalent weight of bread: 137 calories, 2.2g of fat, 3.9g of protein, and 24.8g of carbs. The recipe has roughly 2.5g of “added sugar” per that bread weight.

I wouldn’t consider 4g more of carbs per equivalent weight, or 2.5g more sugar, to be a “lot” more sugar.

I mean, that’s double the added sugar. The US recommends only 50g of added sugar per day. And you’re generally not eating only two slices of bread; in the US breakfast mainstay that is peanut butter and jelly, both the peanut butter and jelly also usually have sugar.

> And you’re generally not eating only two slices of bread;

Aren't you? What meal typically has more than 2 slices of bread? A sandwich is two. Breakfast meals where toast is used is typically 2 slices.

And, if we limit ourselves to the 50g of added sugar a day, I'd say 10% of that for a component of one meal is pretty reasonable.

I was regularly eating around 8 to 10 thick slices per day of bread at one point

* 4 for breakfast as toast

* 4 for lunch to make 2 sandwiches (1 sandwich would be too small and I would be hungry all afternoon)

* sometimes another 2 with soup or an evening snack.

I think that speaks more to your diet than anything else. Regardless of the amount of added sugar, that’s an absurd amount of carbs to be getting just from bread and cannot be particularly healthy, no matter the type of bread.

That is a surprising assertion, given that eating the majority of one's calories in the form of bread was the normal human experience for thousands of years - practically since the beginning of agriculture - throughout Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa!

"Give us this day our daily bread", the old prayer goes: because bread was food, and everything else was accompaniment.

What is your point? That doesn’t mean it’s healthy. Thousands of years is literally nothing on an evolutionary scale. Modern humans have existed for at least 100,000 years.

Bread became ubiquitous because it didn’t require hunting or gathering, i.e. it supported ever growing communities of stationary humans. Not because some ancient nutritionist decided it was good for you.

My point? If you think a staple food vast numbers of human beings have relied on for literally all of recorded history (not to mention thousands of years prior) is "not particularly healthy", then perhaps your definition of "healthy" is a little too exalted for everyday use.

Again, “literally all of recorded history” is literally meaningless. I also find it bizarre that you would find something as simple as a well balanced diet (i.e. one humans enjoyed for hundreds of thousands of years prior to the agricultural revolution) as an “exalted” definition of healthy.

Let’s not use thousand year old traditions based on poorly understood nutritional science to guide today’s practices.

If you get the majority of calories from bread then you are, at best, eating far from the optimal amount of protein and lacking some useful nutrition. At worst, you’re eating a poorly balanced diet that will lead to overeating or malnourishment (or both).

You can't really tell how much sugar there is in baked bread simply based on the amount added in a recipe.

Yeast ferment sugar, so depending on how much yeast you have, how active they are and the fermentation time, a small amount of sugar can easily be long gone by the time the bread comes out of the oven.

That goes for both store bought and homemade.

most definitely not. sugar doesn’t even make top-10 list

Not saying it’s the top ten ingredients of supermarket bread but it certainly has more added sugar than homemade bread

Subway "bread" had too much sugar to be classified as a bread in Ireland

https://www.npr.org/2020/10/03/919831116/irish-court-rules-s...

I can't eat supermarket bread for that reason. I didn't grow up in the US and find the bread here too sweet. (i.e. any added sugar)

I bake my own bread (can't remember the last time I bought some) without sugar.

You don't need sugar if you use sourdough starter with an overnight fermentation in the fridge.

> Even unbleached white flour naturally has a decent micro-nutrient profile of vitamins

That doesn't match my experience, at least in the US. Per 1/4 cup:

KA organic unbleached white flour - 0 vitamins or minerals

Arrowhead Mills organic unbleached white flour - 5 mg calcium, 36 mg potassium

Bob's Redmill organic unbleached white flour - 7 mg calcium, 41 mg potassium

Caputo 00 - 9 mg calcium, 0.2 mg iron, 48 mg potassium

These levels aren't remotely close to decent.

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