WHY WHOLE-WHEAT BREAD ISN’T ALWAYS THE HEALTHIER CHOICE
SNACKS AND SIDES
Is whole-wheat bread always the “healthier” choice? Not necessarily, a study published in the journal Cell Metabolism suggests.
“The findings f or this study are not only fascinating but potentially very important, because they point toward a new paradigm: different people react differently, even to the same foods,” said Eran Elinav, one of the study’s senior authors and researcher at Israel’s Weizmann Institute.
In a randomized trial in 20 healthy subjects, researchers looked at the differences between the effect of eating processed white bread and artisanal wholewheat sourdough. One half ate white, the other wholewheat; after two weeks without eating bread, the diets were reversed.
Researchers measured the participants’ microbiomes, fasting blood sugar and cholesterol levels, as well as essential minerals ( calcium, iron and magnesium), kidney and liver enzymes, and inflammation markers. Perhaps surprisingly, they didn’t see a discrepancy between the two groups.
“The initial finding, and this was very much contrary to our expectation, was that there were no clinically significant differences between the effects of these two types of bread on any of the parameters that we measured,” said Eran Segal, another of the study’s senior authors and a computational biologist at the Weizmann Institute.
“We looked at a number of markers, and there was no measurable difference in the effect that this type of dietary intervention had.”
However, based on earlier findings, they discovered a difference in glycemic responses to the same food. Approximately half of the participants had a better reaction to the whole- wheat sourdough, while the other half responded better to the industrially- produced white bread.
“To date, the nutritional values assigned to food have been based on minimal science, and one- size- fits- all diets have failed miserably,” Elinav said, adding, “These findings could lead to a more rational approach for telling people which foods are a better fit for them, based on their microbiomes.”