Researchers Find “No Clinically Significant Differences” Between Effects Of Eating Different Types Of Bread.

reports researchers found “no clinically significant differences between the effects of” consuming whole wheat sourdough bread or white bread, according to a study published in Cell. For the study, “participants consumed the same amount of white and non-white bread for several days,” then consumed one type of bread for one week, and then two weeks later consumed the other type of bread.Those parameters included glucose levels upon waking, fat and cholesterol levels, the amounts of essential minerals (like calcium, iron and magnesium) in the bloodstream and several indicators of inflammation and tissue damage. The lack of difference between the two breads led the researchers to wonder why. The findings imply that either the two breads have the same effect or that the effect of the bread is specific to each person. Such individual differences would disappear in the data analysis but could be underlying the overall average. To gauge whether individual responses could be at play, the researchers measured glycemic response; that is, changes in blood glucose levels two hours after a meal. This measure is a crucial figure in determining whether a person is at risk for diabetes resulting from weight gain. As it turns out, people respond very personally to bread. Half the participants had a higher glycemic response to industrial white bread, and half had the higher response to artisanal sourdough bread. “People have a personalized glucose response to bread,” Segal tells Newsweek. “White bread may be better for half the people, while sourdough for the other half.” Finally, the researchers found that which bread was best for each person could be predicted based on the bacteria present in their gut. They collected stool samples to determine the collection of microbes living in them and found that the “profile”—the variety of bacterial species—correlated with the glycemic response to each bread. In total, Segal and colleagues examined 20 different variables and found not one single notable difference between the white bread eaters and the artisanal bread eaters. Importantly, it wasn’t that the breads both had no effect. Rather, they both did equal damage. http://www.newsweek.com/bread-healthy-artisanal-processed-white-bread-study-shows-621748