Bread is, without a doubt, one of the most consumed foods in Spain. However, in recent years it has started to be regarded as an unhealthy and harmful food for the body, especially when talking about diets or weight loss. This has led many people to eat much less, try to remove it completely from their diet, or even attempt to substitute it with more favorable options, such as whole-grain bread. But is it really as bad as they portray? Nutritionist Pablo Ojeda has spoken on this topic and has made one thing clear: the problem is not bread itself, but what we put in the shopping cart.
The problem lies in quality
Through his social media, Ojeda has shared a reflection on what is probably the food that appears most often on Spanish tables. “And no, it’s not chicken, nor rice, nor fruit: it’s bread,” he explains. A staple that we consume almost daily but that, more and more, bears less resemblance to what it used to be.
That said, despite everything, the nutritionist firmly argues that this is not a food that should be criticized as much as it tends to be: “I do not think, by any means, that it is a food we should eliminate.” In fact, he asserts that a high-quality bread can perfectly form part of a healthy diet. That is why Ojeda aims to send a clear message: bread is not the problem itself, but how it is produced today. “It has little in common with what our grandparents ate,” he concludes.
Why does supermarket bread make you feel bloated?
Many people have stopped eating bread as often because of the heaviness or bloating it tends to cause in the stomach. Although at first glance gluten might be blamed, the reality is that the problem lies in the way it has been manufactured, explains Ojeda.
Store-bought breads are usually made in a hurry: they use lower-quality flours and let them ferment for very few hours before putting them in the oven. As the expert explains, that lack of time is key, because by not respecting the natural resting period, the bread becomes much more difficult to digest, causing it to sit heavy and leaving your stomach the one that ends up affected by that time constraint.
Eat sourdough bread
For the expert, the key to health is not about banning foods in a radical way, but about knowing what to buy. “You don’t always have to stop eating a food; sometimes you just have to go back to how it was done before,” he says.
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James Whitaker
I’m James Whitaker, a UK-based journalist focused on emerging trends and everyday stories gaining attention across the country. I cover the topics people start talking about before they fully break into the mainstream. My work aims to stay clear, factual, and closely connected to how news is actually consumed today.