What would we do without bread?! Whether you’re making a sandwich, smearing it with butter, or dipping it in your leftover sauce, this food is a long-standing staple in many of our kitchens. However, it’s no secret that eating too much of it can be detrimental to your weight loss goals—but as it turns out, some varieties are much worse than others. While moderation is always key in any healthy diet, there’s one type of bread dietitians say you should steer clear of as much as possible if you want to shed some pounds and avoid inflammation.
To learn more about the worst bread you should leave out of your cart next time you’re at the grocery store, we spoke to Nutritionist Lisa Richards, creator of The Candida Diet, Dietitian Nataly Komova, and Dr. Amy Lee, board certified doctor in internal medicine, medical nutrition and obesity medicine and partner of Nucific. They told us it’s time to cut out white bread if you’re serious about weight loss.
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Avoid White Bread
White bread might just be the most popular bread out there; if nothing else, it's certainly a classic, and many people consider it the most delicious option. However, although your taste buds may love the taste of a PB&J on Wonder Bread, health experts say it's the worst option for your body overall—especially if you want to avoid weight gain and inflammation. "[White bread] is the worst form of bread to consume for many reasons, but especially it's inflammatory effects," Richards warns. Say it ain't so!
If you want to keep your waistline slim and your gut healthy, it's best to avoid this bread at all costs. One of the main reasons it's so terrible for your body is the fact that it's highly refined, making it terrible for your gut and highly inflammatory. "The nature of this type of bread damages the gut by causing inflammation and feeding bad bacteria leading to gut dysbiosis," Richards explains.
Dr. Lee adds that certain ingredients like gluten and preservatives make matters worse when it comes to inflammation. "Gluten is well known to cause bloating and gastrointestinal discomfort for some people when they are gluten intolerant," she says. "Microscopically, it could cause localized inflammation and irregularity of the gut and clinically cause symptoms of bloating, gas and diarrhea." Yikes!
Additionally, refined carbs like white bread have been stripped of all their fiber and nutrients, so it's packing in a ton of calories without any nutritional benefits. Being made from highly refined wheat means white bread does not give you benefits of essential ingredients like fiber," Komova confirms. This means you're also very likely to find yourself hungry again shortly after eating it, making you more likely to run into cravings and overeating later in the day—and the high sugar content doesn't help with that. "Added sugars increase your hunger; there is no fiber to balance things with satiety," she goes on. "This results in overeating, making you suspectable to weight gain and obesity."
Of course, at the end of the day, the occasional slice of white bread won't kill you or cause you to gain ten pounds. However, it's best to limit your intake of this variety as much as possible; instead, reach for whole grain and sprouted options whenever you can. Your body will thank you for it!
