Back in 2006 as I was preparing to open a French bakery in the middle of Pennsylvania, I got a phone call from my French cousin who, to my surprise, just happened to be in the States, just happened to be a baker, and just happened to have some time to spend with me.
My cousin gave me a crash course in bread making, and shared with me something I found hard to believe. “In the States”, he said, “they use products in their bread that cause cancer. Never would they allow their use in France, or anywhere in Europe for that matter.”
It was absolutely ludicrous, but I followed his lead and started searching for non-bromated flour, available wholesale. It wasn’t easy to line up purveyors who carried this product, and it certainly made an impact on my bottom line, but I would not budge–I was not about to kill my customers.
Why Is Bromine Added to Flour?
Iodine used to be added to flour as a dough conditioner, but it became a concern that we might be ingesting too much iodine, and iodine was replaced with bromine in the 80’s. Some articles on the internet state that it enhances the texture of the final baked goods and that it bakes off in the oven. Research shows otherwise.
Bromine is a halide, like iodine, fluoride and chloride. Unlike iodine, though, it has no place in the human body. Bromine intercepts the binding process, making iodine unavailable in the thyroid and anywhere else iodine is needed.
Bromine binds to iodine receptors in the breast, causing cancer. Because of the manner in which bromine inhibits iodine binding, it is directly responsible for much of our iodine deficiency, which can lead to many different types of cancer as well as thyroid disease.
Is it Celiac or Bromine Overload?
Last year I was diagnosed as gluten-sensitive. I was told I had to lay off the gluten, probably forever. But I’m French, I had owned by own bakery, and bread is a staple where I come from. Since I had closed my bakery I had been buying commercial bread and regular flour for when I baked.
Okay, I told my health practitioner, I’ll quit the gluten. Instead I went back through my wholesaler list and bought non-bromated flour. I made all our bread and baked goods. If you’ve ever baked your own bread, you know how irresistible bread right out of the oven is! My bread consumption sky-rocketed. Yet two months later my test results showed no gluten sensitivity at all! The nurse practitioner was jealous (she had Celiac disease).
Intrigued, I called a friend of mine: French with full-blown, recently diagnosed Celiac disease. I told her of my experience. She was going to France for a month. Guess what! She partook in all the French baked goods she wanted (so did her son who had been diagnosed years before), with no side effects, no pain, no repercussions.
Even though some of us would like to, we can’t all move to France, so what’s the next best thing?
How Can You Protect Yourself from the effects of Bromine?
When buying flour at the supermarket, look for non-bromated, un-bleached flour. King Arthur flours say: Never Bromated on them, then dust off your bread maker and indulge in the wonders of homemade bread!
There are many artisan bakeries that use non-bromated flour. Have a conversation with the baker and ask him or her if they use non-bromated flour. Avoid commercial baked goods, cake mixes, etc.
Brands that are bromine-free
(non-bromated or un-bromated):
• Pepperidge Farms breads
• Robin Hood flours
• King Arthur flours
• Sapphire flour (available in 50lb. bags or at your bulk foods stores)
Talk to your health practitioner. Have you had an iodine test lately? (see our brochure: Iodine Deficiency: More Prevalent than Ever Before) for some eye-opening information). Protect your health!
Trans Fats & Partially
Zero trans-fats, the package advertises. But when you read the ingredient list, those cookies do contain hydrogenated oils. Well, does less than one gram make a difference? You bet it does!
So what the heck are hydrogenated oils, anyway?
They are oils that have become solid through a process called hydrogenation. The advantage of them being in a solid form is that now their shelf-life has been transformed. They can sit there for an extraordinarily long time without degeneration. Just take a look at that can of Crisco that’s been sitting in your pantry.
The problem is that trans-fats wreak havoc with your body. They lower your HDL, or good cholesterol while elevating your LDL, or bad cholesterol. This leads to hardening of the arteries, which leads to heart attacks. Harvard nutritionists speculate that trans fats could be responsible for an many as 30,000 premature coronary deaths per year. Is that enough to make you walk past the cookie aisle? For more information read our pamphlet, Trans-fats:The Bad and the Uglier.
What Can You Do To
Protect Yourself from Trans fats?
Read labels religiously. Don’t stop at: “Zero Trans-fats”, because that only means it contains less than one gram of trans-fats, not zero. Go through the ingredient list to make sure there are no hydrogenated oils.
When eating out, ask, “Do you use trans-fats in your food? What do you use to fry your fried foods? What do you make your pie crust with? If the answer is Crisco, vegetable shortening or frying compound–steer clear.
White, Refined, Processed Sugar
So pretty in white, scintillating in the light. It has been processed, stripped of its nutrients, bleached with either lime, phosphoric acid, sulfur dioxide, or calcium hydroxide. Yum!
We know that sugar isn’t good for us, but let’s face it, if we’re going to partake in sweets, we should really make it natural, un-processed, or less-processed sugar, like an evaporated cane sugar.
Evaporated cane juice is crystallized raw sugar that still contains trace minerals. It’s brown, and it is a little sweeter than white sugar.
Better still, are honey, molasses, and maple sugar which has the highest sweetness factor of them all.
Sugar-Free and Deadly Baked Goods
Hopefully you’ve read up on the dangers of aspartame and you read your labels before consuming anything. But just in case you haven’t and you’re in the habit of purchasing sugar-free products, do be aware that aspartame is not only present in sodas, but in sugar free pies and cookies as well as nutritional bars and meal replacements. We won’t discuss it much further here as it is not as widely used in baked goods as in other products.
Transfats – http://www.bantransfats.com/abouttransfat.html
Aspartame Information Centerby David Brownstein, MD (2nd edition 2006) Westbloomfield, Michigan: Medical Alternatives Press. Iodine: Why You Need It, Why You Can’t Live Without It the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor, by Mike Adams,
