Healthy white bread in the shops ‘within 10 years’

FLUFFY white bread could be as guiltfree as brown within a decade after scientists at a new government-backed research hub vowed to create more healthy wheat.

Currently white bread is so much worse because it contains a type of starch that is digested too quickly, leading to huge spikes in blood sugar, which the body can only get rid of by storing it as fat.

Over time such spikes can stop the body producing enough insulin to get rid of the blood sugar, leading to type-2 diabetes, and damage to blood cells.

White bread also prevents the body feeling full, which leads to overeating. But researchers at the new Quadram Institute in Norwich are planning to create a new type of wheat that will be digested more slowly.

Richard Mithen, group leader of the Food and Chemistry Human Health group at the institute, said: “Hopefully it would be as delicious and have the texture you wanted normal bread to be. But it will reduce this big increase in glucose after you eat, it would fill you up, it would say OK, you’ve had a sandwich for lunch that’s enough, you don’t need anything else.”

Prof Mithen added: “And those starches which go down to the lower gut, they ferment those sugars to produce short-chain fatty acids and it’s widely thought those are very beneficial to gut health.

“So we can make that change and there are three consequences which all have health benefits.”

The team is planning to use genes from wild varieties of wheat or maize, which already have the less digestible starch, to breed with crop varieties to make white flour that would be far better for health. They believe it could make fast food far healthier in the future, and help tackle Britain’s growing obesity epidemic.

“We think about fast foods, they are fast to buy, fast to eat and very fast to digest and it’s that fast digestion that’s the problem,” added Prof Mithen. “Educated people who care about their health might already choose healthier brown bread, but it’s the burger bun that really needs to tackling.”

Prof Mithen was speaking at the launch of the Quadrum Institute’s science strategy, which has received £40million in government funding to help improve the world’s food and health, combat obesity and prevent anti-microbial resistance.

Prof Ian Charles, director of the institute, said: “Our aim is to improve health-span so that our population can remain healthy and independent well into old age.”

The institute brings together 300 scientists from the University of East Anglia, Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and Quadram Institute Bioscience.