Bread as a nutritious food

Healthy concepts related to nutritional value are emerging as fundamental quality attributes of bread products.

Bread is a nutritious food. It is starchy food that contains other vital nutrients. It is recommended to eat six slices of bread a day.

The excellent bread can be made from with flour, yeast, salt and water. Of the four ingredients, flour is the only variable, and the nutritional value of that will change according to the extraction rate or by addition during milling.

The nutritional value of bread can be increased by such addition as fat, milk, sugars, malt fruit and nuts.

Despite the fact that the nutritional composition of bread varies with the type of bread, bread is an energy dense product due to the carbohydrate content in the form of starch.

Bread is particularly important as an energy for food, providing 20-30% of the total energy requirements of the people.

It has 70 calories in an average slice. In some tests overweight people have succeeded in shedding pounds on diets of 1,200 to 1,500 calories of which almost half were from bread.

In term of protein, bread has an approximate protein content of 8%. About 20% of the protein intake of the people is provided by the bread baker. It is the cheapest source of protein.

It is also provide the amount of dietary fiber and does not contain cholesterol.

Although breads may appear similar, their ingredients vary widely. Breads made mostly from whole-grain flours provide more benefits to the body than breads made of enriched, refined, wheat flour.

Some ‘high fiber’ breads may contain purified cellulose or more nutritious whole grains. Low carbohydrate breads may be regular white bread thinly sliced to reduce carbohydrates per serving, or may contain soy flour, barley flour, or flaxseed to reduce starch content.

Whole grains breads provided the kind of dietary fiber that reportedly helps prevent such intestinal problems as constipation, diverticulosis and cancer of the colon.
Bread as a nutritious food