Red bean bread, castella, amber butter, mammoth bread… Which bread is the worst for your health?

Bread is often considered a major cause of diabetes and obesity. This is because refined grains, such as wheat flour, are the main ingredient in bread. Refined grains are quickly digested and absorbed, rapidly raising blood sugar levels. If this were true, all Westerners who eat bread as a staple should develop diabetes, but this isn't the case. The reason lies in the type of bread. While Westerners' staple bread is coarse, hard, and dry, Koreans' snack bread is soft, oily, and sweet. Different types of bread also differ in their ingredients and manufacturing methods. For this reason, some breads are high in harmful saturated fat, trans fat, and sugar, while others are not. Let's explore the types of bread that can negatively impact your health.

◇Amber Butter, Castella, Croissants… Snack Breads Increase the Risk of Chronic Disease

 

Breads commonly consumed as snacks, such as amber butter, croissants, and castella, increase the risk of chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. This is because, unlike breads eaten as a staple in the West, these types of bread are relatively high in saturated fat, trans fat, and sugar. In fact, there is research that analyzed the nutritional components of breads commonly consumed in Korea. Professor Kim Byung-hee's research team from the Department of Food and Nutrition at Sookmyung Women's University analyzed 13 types of bread, including 9 types frequently eaten by Koreans and 4 types of bread with high search frequency on domestic portal sites such as Naver and nutrition management mobile apps, for "nutrients that could be harmful to health," such as trans fat, sugar, and sodium. The 9 types of bread selected were red bean bread, white bread, castella, muffin, cream puff bread, jam bread, rye bread, buttercream bread, and croissants, while the 4 types of bread selected included mammoth bread, amber butter, whole wheat bread, and pretzels. The breads were collected from a bakery in Seoul.

 

The study found that among breads sold in domestic bakeries, amber butter and croissants were particularly high in saturated and trans fats, which are harmful to cardiovascular health. Castella had the lowest trans and saturated fat content among breads, but the highest sugar content per 100g. Mammoth Bread had the highest sugar content per serving. Conversely, whole wheat bread and white bread had relatively higher sodium content and lower sugar content than other products.

 

The research team attributed the high trans fat content of amber butter to the fact that it was manufactured using margarine, which contains trans fat, in addition to butter. Amber butter is a type of bread with red bean paste and butter pieces between the bread, and about 26g of fat is added per 100g of dough before baking, including 19g of butter and 7g of olive oil. This is why amber butter has a high saturated fat content. Castella also recorded the highest sugar content because a surprisingly large amount of sugar is added during the manufacturing process. In fact, castella contains 21-37g of sugar per 100g of dough before baking.

◇Replace with coarse, hard, tough, and unsweetened bread

 

Even if you do eat bread, it's best to choose coarse, hard, crusty, and unsweetened staple breads. Rye bread and whole-grain bread are prime examples. Germany, where rye is more abundant than wheat, prefers dark, hard rye bread over white bread. Traditional European breads are sugar-free. Whole-grain bread, made by grinding the wheat hull and germ together, has a glycemic index of less than 40-50, which slowly raises blood sugar levels. It also provides vitamins, minerals, and fiber. If you can't give up fatty, soft, and fluffy snack breads, try eating them with beans, seaweed, or vegetables. This can slightly slow down the digestion and absorption of the bread.

 

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All breads are delicious

Among them, I like the red bean buns. Haha

 

For health, like a baguette

They say hard bread is good