Do you ever wonder how your “whole grain” breads, bagels, and cereals stack up? Good for you, because a lot of products plaster “made with whole grains” across the front of their package, but when the truth (aka the ingredients list and the Nutrition Facts Panel) is dissected, it turns out they contain more refined grains than whole grains.
Words like “contains 100% whole grains” is one clue that you’ve got a decent whole grain product, doing a tiny bit of math is another. I chanced upon an article on the Harvard Health Blog the other day that advises looking for a 10-to-1 ratio of carbohydrates to fiber. If your bread has 20 grams of carbohydrates, it needs to have at least 2 grams of fiber. Easy. So I decided to put my household bread to the test.
My current bread of choice is Silver Hills Bakery’s Squirrelly bread. I first started buying it because Costco carries it, and it is the only sprouted grain bread they carry other than Dave’s Killer Bread, which, while tasty and nutritious, contains too much sugar for my liking.
So how does Squirrelly stack up? 17 grams of carbohydrates and 5 grams of fiber…far more than the 1.7 grams needed to make the grade. Excellent. I should add that each slice contains only 1 gram of sugar, which is far less than many otherwise good breads.
How does your favorite bread measure up?