I couldn’t sleep the other day and ended up watching this video about “why medieval bread was a superfood while your modern bread made you sick” and it really got me to thinking about bread again. I used to make my own bread when I was a more ambitious person, but it’s so much work that I eventually went back to buying bread at the store. And now I’m reconsidering that choice because, if that video is even remotely correct, store-bought bread is way worse than I realized.
Then, I got to thinking about all the other store-bought convenience food that we often consume, like cookies, chips … even orange juice and I’m afraid that it’s all probably worse than I realized. But I already knew some of this. My wife and extended family have long been into “healthy” foods, whether that’s fruits and vegetables, like my wife prefers, vegetarian or vegan diets, like some extended family prefer, or very strict diets because of health-related concerns. There’s a lot of opinions around my household.
Personally, I grew up on meat and potatoes, which I’m beginning to feel like was the better choice given that it should be less-processed than most grocery store foods. My problem is that so many “healthy” foods, whether you think that’s meat or fish or something else is probably loaded with a bunch of antibiotics, growth hormones, preservatives and who knows what else, though it depends on who you listen to. It’s a reall mess to be sure.
Even something as plain as eggs can’t be trusted anymore. Those “cage free” and even “organic” eggs aren’t what they’re touted to be according to some folks. We recently went to Washington D.C. to visit the Smithsonian museums for my birthday. We ate the same hotel continental breakfast all week long. What I noticed most was how different their eggs were from what I’ve become accustomed to with my backyard chickens. It’s a night and day difference, so much so that my wife refused to eat them most of the time. How did we ruin eggs!?
My youngest son has been into eating healthier the past few years, which is wonderful. At least, he tries to do better than most of his buddies from what I can tell. I remember when he mentioned that we should avoid any packaging that included “bioengineered” ingredients. Whatever your take on their safety, I didn’t know anything about it. But then I started looking at packages and there is was … all sorts of foods had the label.
It didn’t used to be there, so what changed?
The government mandanted that companies include a statement if their packaged foods had bioengineered ingredients, whatever those are. My question is: what else is in our foods that we’re not being told about? What else has the government allowed, or the companies lobbied to keep off their labels, that we don’t know about? Maybe these unknown igredients are fine or maybe not. The problem is that we’re not being given the full picture.
Long tangent aside, I think American’s food choices are horrible and getting worse, which is why I’m leaning toward making my own bread again. There are apparently a few different “ancient” grains, Einkorn being one of them. But I haven’t bought any yet because it’s expensive!
The video below shows how to make it, though the process isn’t for those in a hurry because it needs proofed for 12 hours and there’s a lot more involved. If interested, there are other ways to make bread healthier, such as by adding flax seeds or high-protein lentils (both videos), but I would stick with the very basics for now. Thoughts?
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