Post by @forkranger

If you buy white bread you’re basically wasting food 👀 (and missing a lot of health benefits). The Swedish baker Lantmännen explains on their website that milling the whole grain removes the bran and germ (which contain most of the nutrition). That means they only use 75-80% of the original grain. But when they make whole grain flour they use 100% of the grain. The brand and germ are often used as animal feed and labeled as ‘by-products’. But this should count as a form of food waste. Especially since eating the refined version causes so much suffering: a diet low in whole grains causes more premature deaths than traffic accidents, homicides, terrorism, and war COMBINED! Not eating enough whole grains is the biggest cause of diet-related health issues (together with a diet high in salt, followed by not eating enough fruit). Unfortunately, most of our grains (bread, rice, pasta) are refined. The only way to make sure a product is whole-grain is to check the ingredients list on the back and find the word ‘whole-grain’. Ingredients are listed according to the quantity. So for a product like bread, ‘whole-grain’ should be the first word. Sources: USDA. FoodData Central. https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/?query=wheat Lantmannen Unibake website Boston Consulting Group. The Whole Truth About Whole Grains. March 20, 2024. Afshin, A., Sur, P. J., Fay, K. A., Cornaby, L., Ferrara, G., Salama, J. S., ... & Murray, C. J. (2019). Health effects of dietary risks in 195 countries, 1990–2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017. The lancet, 393(10184), 1958-1972. Max Roser (2021) - “Causes of death globally: what do people die from?” Published online at OurWorldInData