BythepowerofPlank
93419
1371
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Sep 2, 2023 3:27 PM
BythepowerofPlank
93419
1371
40
GlenL
Yes, and if you got the same level of exercise those cultures got over the centuries, they wouldn't be bad for you either
ToSisPoS
Because we eat like a season of famine is coming. But it is not.
otiumCatulli
Supermarket bread is ultra processed. It's nothing like what you're Gramma used to make
LockstinGnoggin
I'll have to search for it again, but something like 500BCE china, there's a manuscript warning nobles to stay away from rice because it's unhealthy peasant food that will fatten you and is devoid of nutrients. Granted nobles led much less active lives too.
Jadora
It's the pancakes you have with maple syrup and the pasta for lunch followed by a small mid day sandwich and then having pizza and soda for dinner that's the issue :) everything is loaded with carbs, carbs turn into sugar, sugar is extremely unhealthy. Cancerous in fact. Having only one carby meal a day doesn't hurt but every snack and meal being high carb is the issue.
Cavoo
I present to you the food pyramid based on research funded by Kelloggs and General Mills. Yes it's just a simple coincidence that the pyramid says to eat more products made by the companies that funded the research don't look too closely /s
tounushi
"Regular store-bought bread is bad for you," and "just rice is bad for you." You're better off baking your own bread and you need have other stuff mixed with the rice to avoid rickets.
wetqueef
Agriculture meant bigger families. It also meant more death at the altar of farming. Centuries isn’t enough time for an organism to evolve to get its nutrition from an entirely novel source.
joshuColorTaker
The cars, computers, & cubicles sedentary lifestyle is not centuries old.
theDogter
Sugar is a drug and should be moderated as such, everything else is generally okay just not too much.
maqp2
It has its places, e.g. for endurance athletics like road cycling, you want to consume glucose and fructose to feed the engine. The problem is this extreme sport fuel is sold to kids with "drink this and you'll be a Lance Armstrong in no time" mentality.
Xen300
What's bad for you is stuffing your face with staple grains once you're no longer hungry.
maqp2
The problem is the stuff you stuff your face with doesn't keep the hunger away.
ThisUserNameIsAlreadyTaken0
Cavities don't become common in the archeological record until after humans started cultivating these staple grains.
JoeT85
I'm tired of hearing what is bad for me. Can, just once, have an announcement that doesn't take away something I love. Maybe tacos cure sadness; Let's do that
undercoverles
Resident pancreatic disorder/amylase deficiency individual here: they are very bad for me ): hours upon hours on toilet plus I get 5% of the
undercoverles
Over all, for most, it should be about balance, make the carbs work by eating brown/purple rice, wholegrain bread, etc. white bread=sugar
undercoverles
Energy once what little can be broken down and converted is. Otherwise it makes me feel like total shit. Sometimes I crucify myself for mozz
Fizzypeach
The amount of sugar/other sweetners and wheat in things that dont need them is astronomical.
maqp2
The problem is, when every competitor sells a sweet bread, you can't really sell non-sweet bread because it tastes like cardboard. This needs federal regulation and/or heavy taxation. Nothing else will ever change it.
Barbecu3barb
I love carbs, but they unfortunately don’t love me back. 😭
DisgruntledFerret
It's an unrequited love. How bittersweet. :(
Alfadorfox
Water is essential to living at all but you'll still die if you drink too much of it. Everything has a lethal dose.
maqp2
In this analogy, every drink sold in stores in the US was mixed into seawater.
QuartetOfNerds
Fun fact: evidence shows that some ancient Egyptians had obesity problems due to their over-reliance on grains.
teal4two
"In his review1 of Clark Spencer Larsen's book Skeletons in Our Closet: Revealing the Past through Bioarchaeology, Christopher Wills concludes that “overall health was reduced by . . . the introduction of agriculture”. He notes that there is little evidence that farmers lived longer than hunter–gatherers."
intaglioguy
Beriberi was historically an upper-class disease because they could afford the rice that was whiter due to milling. It's a cautionary tale about eating food that has had its nutrients processed out of it.
evilspock
Too much of anything is bad. Lots of carbs of any sort plus a sedentary lifestyle == fat, and that's unhealthy. So long as your energy intake and output are close and you're getting your vitamins, you're ahead of the game.
maqp2
This pretty much. The trick isn't counting the calories, but eating things that you want to eat for a LONG period of time that ensure you don't feel hungry (affect mood or make you unable to focus to work/study), but where you also don't exceed the calories. Sometimes the trick is to find the recipe you like. In US it's finding stuff with low glycemic index, like rye bread.
Twrecks123
Most of those centuries of cultures did backbreaking labor and they needed the carbs and heft of those grains to keep their bodies functioning. Sitting at a desk all day doesn’t require the same amount of heavy carbs.
Astramancer
Also all those carbs *are* bad for us, but starving to death is worse and it's easier to grow, store, and eat grains than most other foods so that's what ancient cultures settled on.
license2kilt
I work in construction. Can I eat bread?
Twrecks123
I don’t know, CAN you eat bread?
realizedagain
Oh god I just had flashbacks to the insanely trash diets my fellow construction workers had. Slim jims and energy drinks, doritos, fried anything.
license2kilt
I know guys like that. I try to avoid that but some days when I’m bouncing between 3-4 Jo sites it’s hard to eat well on the run.
redditmcredditface
Our bodies are not designed to take in that much sugar (carbs, etc) without doing a lot more moving. Humans are naturally plains wanderers. those plains looks different depending in which part of the world, so some genetics inform our metabolisms to have us build fat when we take in carbs, some burn it quickly. Grains that are grown today are not grown for nutritional value, but for speed and processing ease. That means more sugar, less protein.
BythepowerofPlank
Protein?
redditmcredditface
you need protein and to some extent fat to build and maintain muscle. grains nowadays are fairly low protein. carbohydrates turn to sugar in various forms in your body. carbs in themself are not bad, but too much carbs and it trains your body to store fat. you NEED to burn those carbs and maintain a fat/protein ratio that works for you. All I know is once I started cutting out excess sugar/carbs from my diet and started moving more, my desk job didnt feel like it was killing my body as much.
SodomySnake
FreeDadHugs
There's always bread in the banana stand.
autodidacticcortex
It’s a loaf of bread, Michael. How much could it cost?
masterpainimeanbetty1
*click click*
JarlmannViking
Food is not bad for you. The increased amount of time spent idle in your life now compared to 50 years ago is.
JavaCofe
^this and also greater highly processed foodstuffs in the diet.
Monocular0
The difference between potion and poison is the dose. Whole foods aren’t bad for you, but large amounts of a single type of food is. Same with heavily processed foods: they are okay in moderation, but too much of them can cause serious health effects. You can even overdose on most vitamins.
aap71
i was born 50 years ago. cars, office jobs, suburban torpor, processed foods. they all existed then, too. and they smoked.
piewacket
TIL a new word: torpor.
GiveYourBallsATug69
It's a bit of both. Foods (esp. processed) have become loaded with shite. Bread in some places can have a surprising quantity of sugar which is entirely unnecessary. Typically makes food hypercaloric, and the usual sedentary lifestyle just makes it worse since none of those extra calories are getting spent.
maqp2
What adds insult to the injury is the hypercaloric food with high glycemic index isn't satient, so you eat a lot more of it even you could eat much less to meet daily calorie intake. Two white toasts push hunger to 15 minutes from now. A good rye bread gives you 1-2 hours.
mrgreen326
Every time I think about drinking anything other than water I look at the sugar content on the label and I'm always shocked that at all the added grams of sugar.
GiveYourBallsATug69
True, it's especially bad for drinks, even more so when you consider how quickly liquid goes through you and makes it easy to down, say, 2-3 cans of soda a day if you don't pay attention to that.
OddlyPacific
Turning pages of newspapers and magazines was so much more active than swiping. /s
astrangehop
Run to the nearest newsstand and tell us how many calories you burn
OddlyPacific
I would get it delivered and walk all the way out of my house to my porch.
wherethehorriblethingsare
Back in MY DAY if you wanted a new page you had to haul your stone tablet back to the library and get a new one, uphill both ways!
a2s2020
You had a stone tablet library? We watched the cave paintings flicker in the firelight and it was enough for us!
KnifeKnut
They weren't eating bread that was refined white flour rather than whole grains.
gschally
Plus tons of added sugar to keep it shelf stable, plus the wheat today is not like the wheat over the course of human history.
SirenBrick
Well, some were, it was an expensive process to get refined white flour so most couldn't afford to use it. The trouble now is white flour is often chemically assisted to look appealing and last longer, and then mixed with huge amounts of "healthy" sugar to make white bread.
tounushi
Grandma still yucks at whole wheat bread because she remembers spitting out the hulls as a kid.
ZwaffeldeKachel
Me neither. I don't know anyone who actively buys white bread for anything other than some specific sandwich that requires it. I remember going to the US and getting the liquid shits because it was so difficult to find any non-white bread. Even some of the bread marketed as multigrain didn't contain any fiber. I would hate to be an American toilet.
donpat
There's something *else* wrong either in your gut or in your diet if eating white bread is the thing that gives you the liquid shits.
ZwaffeldeKachel
Well the overwhelming amount of fat in the food probably didn't help either. It is quite common for food in other continents to give people bowel problems if they're not used to it. But a complete lack of fibre well definitely do some things to your bowels. Chronic diarrhoea is quite high in the US which you can check if do a quick google search. But since im getting downvoted I am guessing people dont really wanna hear that.
Monocular0
Some people’s guts can’t process gluten. Not celiac, but it might give them intestinal issues, inflammation, etc. Yes, there’s “something else” wrong that’s causing the sensitivity, but gluten is still the trigger food. Source: I have IBS and gluten is a trigger food for me.
donpat
Right.. but that's got nothing to do with white vs wheat bread as the person was complaining about.
DYLANLEE79
Evolution doesn't give a shit about centuries.
wandermanspacebot
*Evolution takes centuries (at least)
Salticido
We can see evolutionary changes much faster actually if the pressure is strong enough, which we've seen a lot lately with human influence. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria, industrial melanism, cliff swallows favoring shorter wings for better maneuverability around cars, etc. Without human influence, this still happens from natural disasters and/or with species that reproduce very quickly and thus create many generations in a short span of time (like fruit flies).
DYLANLEE79
My point was that a few centuries are not enough time to significantly change the human genome enough to change our digestive process to adapt to the foods we have created.
TheMajesticHarpyEagle
Been longer than centuries and you can actually see changes in our digestion since then.
wandermanspacebot
Ah. Carry on, sir or madam.
realizedagain
It might be long enough for our microbiome to evolve though.
mksu
I just try to cut out unnecessary bread and stuff. Like if it's not really improving whatever food item I'm consuming, the bread goes bye bye.
oskob
I use the exact same principle, but with meat
Estoyp00ping
It goes bye bye down my gullet.
ToasterDent
Buns for bratwurst? No. Buns for hot gods? Yes, same for hamburgers.
PhailRaptor
There is no meal on Earth that isn't improved by cheesy garlic bread
mksu
And I can afford to eat the garlic bread because I didn't get the nasty hot dog bun from 7-Eleven.
amb1021
I'm with you. I eat tons of veggies and whole grains and stuff mostly to feel good, but also so when I have the opportunity to eat something truly yummy that has lots of calories, I do it.
IrrationalNumber
So you eat bars of butter like candy bars?
LickFury
*salted butter
mksu
purgruv
You use bars of butter to grease that slippery slope there, fella?
IrrationalNumber
I'm not the one using bread as a condiment.
wandermanspacebot
I'm not the condiment using you as bread. Or am I?
SilverFoxChaser
Different is amount and composition. Rice is a simple food yes but when you're eating 2-4x the amount historically eaten by people it is bad. Bread is also bad in large amounts but with the added benefit of being loaded with sugar and other chemicals now.
Ifekinlovesauerkraut
Not bread in general, no. Only that stuff that Americans call bread.
notyoubizness
It isn't necessarily the amount. It is that the grains that compose the bread and rice have been bred to be large. And resistant to rot. The largeness means that the ratio of nutrients to carbohydrates is much lower than in the historical past. The resistance to rot means that it is harder for you to digest the nutrients. So what you get out of it is a very high ratio of carbs, while getting almost no nutrients whatsoever, and those are critical to life.
Zetor
Eat variety. Not too much of anything.
sortofkindamadbutnotreally
This. Bread didnt traditionally last longer than like 2 to 3 days tops and also isnt really aupposed to
saluksic
alternately, traditional time-honored cultures sometimes just had poor nutrition and the individuals in them suffered for it. Literally no law that says ancient people were smart or fortunate.
CynicalPrints
Industrialized processing removes a lot of the grain parts we used to eat. We would get more fiber and less sugar. So hard to quit sugar in the US . It’s almost like our brains are wired for more and when we get it, it doesn’t hit the same way, so then we want even more, but then that levels out. So we add more. Weird right?
Ryanator50
sometimes I'm hungry and I need 10,000 of something. Rice is perfect.
KILLERCHROMATIC
The flour the bread is made from is also not what it used to be. I’m fact pretty bad. Many use one kind of wheat that grows big but has very few natural vitamins in it. We used to eat many different kinds before it became mass produced. The same goes for the yeast used in the bread. There used to be many sorts with many different health benefits. Now there is only one kind that does nothing for you.
maqp2
There's no such thing as e.g. natural vitamin C. There's a chemical called ascorbic acid, and your body doesn't give a crap where it comes from. But there's a shitton of grifters willing to sell you stuff they full well know doesn't make a difference if it means another yacht for them. The actual problem is with flour is removing the fibrous parts to make bread, hamburger buns etc. easy to freeze without change in texture. This means much higher glycemic index, which means you eat more -> profit
raindirve
i could offer a minor correction - there are two "mirrors" (sorry, my old chem teacher) of ascorbic acid and only one of them is biologically active as vit C. Not that it matters - natural sources provide the right type, since we organisms all use the same one, while artificial additives that usually make 50/50 of each come in doses of like 2000% of your RDI, so it doesn't matter that half is inert, you're getting all you need anyway. (Of course they know it's 50% too and adjust accordingly.)
maqp2
Interesting! I was pondering whether to double-check ascorbic acid for isomers, now I know I should have. Many thanks :)
catmandont123
Ezekiel bread for the win!!!!
SarcasticComment
that last part is the problem. people didn't have these issues when everything was "whole foods"
Mack1986
I mean I keep hearing about how those people are starving. Of course I'm gonna eat more than them
WhatAreYouTalkingAboutEh
obviously
Slashenaar
{Region lock: US} And on the other side of the equation we are living depressed, anxious, sedentary, car-bound lives. Miserable? fill that void with a baconator, now you're hyper-hypertensive and there's no way you're walking home after that, but good thing cause if you walked there you might feel a little better and get a cheeseburger instead of doubledouble w/ double-bacon
Dimestream
Rice is a great food for when you're hungry and want to eat 10,000 of something.
conniecpu
Mainly the sugar
BlairT1
And the fact that the wheat is so refined that many of the beneficial components have been stripped away to make it beautiful, white and consistent. Which is good for marketing and industrial production, but bad for (checks notes) the people consuming it 🫤
karlostroski
Also how we grow the foot (soil, chemicals, etc) and how we store / process it and how we cook it matter as well. Plus, shout out to those with allergies / sensitivities. I have recipes of you need them.
Sticklebrickk
Check your nutrition labels, folks. Bread with 0% dietary fiber? The fuck are you eating!?
Bonesy84
Not just that, most of us aren’t doing farm work so our labour is a lot lower.
astronomypictures
I once bought a loaf of brad in the US when I stayed there. I thought I'd made a mistake and bought cake.
DrewtanggaurdiumLeviosa
Gotta love that loaf Brad. Mmmm
glittalogik
Just following Brads around, waiting for them to drop a loaf...
Zaranthan
You weren't exactly wrong.
DefinitelyaHumanNotanAlien
I remember the day I learned that Americans used sugar as an ingredient in bread. I wonder how many of them genuinely believe it to be a required ingredient, or even know what actual bread tastes like?
StephenDaniels
A typical US market has a 100ft long aisle filled with bread made off site and its own bakery. If it sells at all that market will have it
TI99Kitty
I mean, ANY kind of processed food in the U.S. has unnecessary sugar added. Box mixes, frozen dinners, canned food. And that's not even taking into account things that are SUPPOSED to be sweet, like cakes, cookies, sweet soft drinks, etc.
RufusPimperton
Fewer and more than you'd think respectively. Don't fall for sensationalist media stores that can be reduced to "people over there are silly/stupid." I have been able to get bread without added sugar in every grocery store in every state I've been in. Actual bread is everywhere in this country; it's fast food that adds sugars and/or processes the hell out of bread for logistics reasons.
aThingWithTheStufAndTheJunk
There are families who eat nothing but wonder bread, yes. I apparently live in a different world from them because I don't know any who do, personally. Everybody I know gets bread from a bakery, no sugar added.
Blackcurry328
It’s not that Americans are adding sugar to their bread, it’s that the cheapest and most common options, as well as the ones used in fast food have a ton of sugar. Someone with the time to bake their own bread probably wouldn’t add sugar to it. And someone who knew how much added sugar is in the cheapest options would buy one with out any if they felt like they could spend the extra money.
BoominGranny
I’ll add a scant teaspoon to the yeast to give those little babies something to eat but otherwise no.
Slashenaar
No and it fucking blows to those of us who do https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FovIyqov1uA&t=1s
PballQhead
Sugars of some form are perfectly cromulent additions to bread; Americans use white sugar or corn syrup because it's the cheapest option but there's plenty of other ways to sneak it in. If your bread has malt of any sort, it's got added sugar, and that's an old and well-accepted sugar to add even in Europe. Source, I work at a Beard-award-winning bread bakery.
Ularsawa
It's the amount of sugar that is the issue. German bread also uses white sugar but just a pinch and not a quarter of the whole bread or whatever the proportion in the US is
PballQhead
Again, SOME American breads. I assure you, one can find European-spec bread in most supermarkets; just don't buy Wonder Bread.
Ularsawa
But isn't it about what most US-Americans consume?
Sonicschilidogs
Bread is literally just sugar bro.....
avvar
So why add more concentrated sugar to it?
Sonicschilidogs
In layman's terms, more simple sugars mean more neurotransmitters associated with positive stimuli, which means you'll want more, which means more bread sales.
lrateyourrig
You're right, but it'll be an argument Ima watch
Sonicschilidogs
Thank you for acknowledging at least, it's funny that people came on here, argued about bread not being sugar, and then used fiber and starch as their evidence.
riplikash
So are vegetables. Most things coming from plants are made of sugar.
Sonicschilidogs
Yup
Blackcurry328
That is reductive to the point of not being true. *Starch* is just sugar. Flour has proteins including gluten, which gives bread is structure. It also includes some fiber. Whole grain and multigrain bread is going to include higher ratios of fiber, protein, and vitamins than white bread. Furthermore, starch has to be broken down before it gets absorbed into your bloodstream, which means that eating sugar causes a bigger blood sugar spike than eating a comparable amount of starch. And even if 1/2
Blackcurry328
your statement were true, so much shit has unnecessary added sugar, and it adds up. This is one of the reasons we have an obesity issue in this country. So much more shit has added sugar than people realize. 2/2
maqp2
Plus you get accustomed to the high sugar content and if you (could) drop back to 'regular' things, they don't taste good for weeks. But after the adjustment period, the non-sugary food starts to taste really good and the sugary stuff is just disgusting. Even here in Finland where rye and archipelago bread are the national past time, it's easy to fall back to sugary stuff. In US it's ridiculously hard to avoid.
Sonicschilidogs
Starch is sugar, glucose is sugar, and yes, even fiber IS SUGAR! Yes, there are very, very small amounts of protein and nucleic acid, but bread is largely just different sugars.
Blackcurry328
Fiber is indigestible, and all purpose flour is 8-11% gluten, and bread flour is 12-14% gluten. That’s not a very small amount in the slightest.
PaintedSlate
Bread carbohydrates can be converted to sugars, more or less, looking just at the overall calories. But the different conversion processes for different breads/carbs changes the nutritional effects of eating it, including hormone responses. Consider glycemic index as one simplified way to focus on it.
Sonicschilidogs
CARBOHYDRATES ARE ALL SUGARS! TABLE SUGAR IS JUST A SPECIFIC CARBOHYDRATE CALLED GLUCOSE!
AawesomeAardvaark
You must know there's a difference between complex carbs and simple carbs.
Sonicschilidogs
They're all sugars! Carbohydrates ARE sugars! Complex or otherwise!
PaintedSlate
If you won't distinguish monosaccharides and polysaccharides, you're gonna make worse decisions. Cellulose is equally just a bunch of glucose molecules. But not, because chemistry matters. Na, Cl, and NaCl should be clearly distinguished, too.
Sonicschilidogs
Well duh, sodium and chlorine are elements not salts....
Eldis
Rice has variety. Darker rice has much better macros than white does. Eating white rice is close to eating spaghetti.
maqp2
spaghetti also has full grain variants that reduce hunger much more so let's not rule out pasta as a healthy meal. But yeah, wrt weight control, it all boils down to glycemic index of food, and whether or not keeping out hunger throughout the day means you get more calories than you consume or less.
Eldis
Full grain variants of pasta is not nearly as good as dark rice. I don't think it's comparable, white rice and full grain pasta are about the same.
maqp2
Here are the glycemic indexes for comparison.
white rice 64..72
brown rice 55
regular pasta 42..45
black rice 42.3
whole grain pasta 37
Eldis
Carbohydrates aren't unhealthy. especially the kind in high fiber foods. Dark rice has more fiber and more other important nutritional ingredients than pasta. People should, in general, stop being obsessed by carbohydrates - you wouldn't argue broccoli is unhealthy because it has them.
miked854
Also the way we live is completely different. Spending your days doing agricultural work with large animals helping with heavy lifting is an entirely different caloric need than living in modern society.
avvar
That's the biggest thing, imo. We went from a life where almost everyone was very physically active, whether in their trades, hunting, or in the fields, to one where the majority are not (at least in the countries where carbs are an issue). Even most of our physical labor jobs are easier than they used to be thanks to modern tools and tech.
Kehy
For some reason though they don't seem to want apprentices using construction drones. Haven't the foggiest idea why
Rogahar
This is the major component to it all. It's why straight calorie counting is the most effective diet for many people, as long as you have the willpower to resist going over - you can still eat the things you want to eat, as long as you either stay below your current calorie intake or start being more active so you can raise it higher and eat more lol.
schizznatt
Calorie-counting was the single biggest factor in getting me to exercise regularly- and get at least 10,000 steps a day. “Oh, if I go for a run, I can eat HOW much more!?”
schizznatt
But it’s important to actually count, otherwise you tend to overestimate how much you burn when you exercise and then eat too much as a result (“oh, I ran 30 minutes today so I can have this giant piece of cake and massive plate of fried food”)
BlueDsc
Having lost a bit over 100 pounds in the last year-ish with the primary change being calorie intake, can confirm. Fun fact, changing your eating habits to account for calories kinda makes you lean to less unhealthy foods.
BlueDsc
I also still eat rice with a good portion of my meals. Bread as well.
SophieClockwise
That last part depends entirely on which country you live in. Live in the U.S.? Yeah, you go ahead, chow down on that sweet, sweet candy bread.
spinbutton3
Depends on where you buy your bread...local bakery, or make it yourself bread is sugar free and delicious
McJersey
I like candy bread...
DrunkenMarineBiologist
The first time I ate bread in Europe, I realized that most US bread is closer to cake than actual bread
Haemaelaeinen
Swedish bread is very sweet too, the ones they sell here in Finland and the ones I have eaten there. Also all their candy etc is way sweeter than Finnish ones. It is wild how big a difference it is, and we are neighboring countries.
loma45
Subway couldn't call their bread "bread" in Ireland because it had FIVE TIMES the sugar limit to fall under that classification. It's "confectionary", I.E. cake/pastries/etc https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/01/irish-court-rules-subway-bread-is-not-bread
crazyspelling
I am 100% a sugar addict and Subway bread is too sweet for me. I don't want deli meat on cake!
sfrinlan
I mean, you can get real bread in the US at most grocery stores, it's just not sold as pre-sliced, long term shelf stable loaf bread.
Saxytimes
I don't have a nearby bakery 😭 but fresh baked from the grocery is definitely better
pudaheh
And the price is out of reach for a *lot* of people.
Spiderbutts
Can confirm. My local bakery has the best frickin sourdough. They slice it for me. Pretty much no sugar!
mithgaladh
"Pretty much", you aren't supposed to put sugar in your bread at all
Spiderbutts
Well, when you eat carbs, your body turns it into sugars for energy. There's no added sugar in bakery bread, but it will increase your blood sugar all the same.