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Gluten-free Free
Here at Breadtopia HQ, we have a pretty simple philosophy of healthy eating. And it generally follows along in the same vein as the advice popularized by bestselling author and famous foodie, Michael Pollan: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” And as we read on his website:
From a nutritional standpoint, here at Breadtopia, we emphasize two things that we believe contribute to healthy real bread:
We feel that these traditional ingredients and methods yield both the best flavor and the best nutritional value in the bread you bake. And although the loaves you see on the grocery store shelves are also called “bread,” in our experience they can’t really be compared with a proper artisan-baked loaf in any way.
Now a question that is increasingly being raised in response to the recent explosion of gluten-free everything (really Green Giant?; gluten-free broccoli?), is whether, aside from the approximately 1% of the adult population with Celiac disease (who are truly unable to eat gluten without severe health consequences), the problem for many people with so-called wheat and/or gluten sensitivity is really about wheat and gluten per sé, or is instead a problem with the modern “Franken-wheat” that is the result of roller milling and the corporatization of food in the developed world (see Pollan video below).
There is an increasing body of evidence that many of the health issues related to eating wheat are more specifically related to the consumption of modern wheat processed via a roller mill into white flour and baked through a very rapid, mechanized process utilizing commercial yeast. This turns out to be a good way to fill grocery store shelves and make a profit on a vast scale, but not a very good way to provide nutrition (or flavor).
Here’s a great video of Michael Pollan speaking at a community grains conference on what he learned when he researched white flour and modern wheat for his recently published book, Cooked (Pollan begins @ 4:15).
By the way, if you have Netflix and haven’t seen Pollan’s 4-part series companion to the book, also called Cooked, you should watch it; it’s really good.
Every day now, we are hearing and reading more nuanced pushback against the overly-simplistic diet fad of completely eliminating wheat and gluten. Below are a few recent podcasts, videos, and articles that we found interesting.
Mother Jones: The Real Problem With Bread (It’s Probably Not Gluten) – One wheat scientist has a compelling theory.
The New Yorker: AGAINST THE GRAIN Should you go gluten-free?
The Huffington Post: Redefining Bread
BBC: The great gluten-free diet fad
Mental Floss: Scientists Find Non-Gluten Cause of Wheat Sensitivity
NY Post: Gluten-free is total BS
Gluten-free Free