Bleached Enriched White Flour. Just this week one of my children had an assignment at school to compare whole wheat and white flour. I have always known the benefits of whole wheat, but was unaware of exactly how bad bleached white flour is for you. Take a look at what we discovered:
White , bleached enirched flour is made from the whole wheat kernel, however when the flour is refined, it loses the most nutritious parts of the grain—the fiber, essential fatty acids, and most of the vitamins and minerals. In fact, about
30 nutrients are removed, but by law only five must be added back. Most of the time they consist of iron, niacin, thiamine, riboflavin and
folic acid. Thus earning the title, enriched. Despite what you make think, enriching flour and breads does not produce the original integrity of the whole grain.
Quite often the flour is chemically bleached, just like you bleach your clothes. Therefore, when you are eating white bread,
you are also eating residual chemical bleach. After reading the different chemicals used, I started feeling a little sick to my stomach.
Here are a few of them:
- Oxide of nitrogen
- Chlorine
- Chloride
- Nitrosyl
- Benzoyl peroxide mixed with various chemical salts.
These chemicals not only give it it's pure white color, but it also gives the flour a longer shelf life.
Now lets take a look at whole wheat:
Whole wheat flour contains most of the calcium, iron, magnesium and potassium that the body needs. Even more than the vitamins and nutrients contained in whole wheat, the greatest advantage to it is fiber. Fiber is the leading star. There is so little fiber left after processing white flour that you would have to eat eight pieces of white bread to get the fiber in just one piece of whole wheat bread.
- In a 10 year study completed in 1994, both men and women who ate high-fiber breads had fewer heart attacks and strokes than those who consumed white breads.
- In the April of 2003 issue of The Journal of American Medical Association it was stated that simply switching from white to whole wheat bread can lower heart disease risk by 20 percent.
- Fiber in the diet aids in digestion and helps one lose or maintain weight. Whole wheat bread, made from 100% whole wheat flour is the preferred choice when it comes to nutrition.
There is only one true solution to ensure that you retain the pure unaltered whole grain in your diet and that is to bake using the 100% whole wheat. Now don't be deceived by the whole wheat flour on the store shelves, it is not what it
purports to be. Whole wheat flour, freshly ground is what I am referring to.
If you have not cooked with 100% whole wheat before, it takes some getting use to, not only in taste but in cooking with it as well. Try adding it slowly into your diet to replace your white flour, but what ever you do, NEVER buy, cook, or feed your families Bleached White Flour.I am going right now to check on the white flour I have on my shelves.
...where we can garden year round! 
