Which of these breads is best and why?

Discussion in 'Diet & Nutrition' started by nLinked, Oct 14, 2012.

  1. nLinked

    nLinked New Member

    • Wholemeal
    • Wholewheat
    • Whole grain

    My goal is mass gain.
  2. CDB

    CDB New Member

    Look to overall calories if your goal is weight gain. As for the breads, pick the one that tastes the best or costs the least, or makes you fart the least, or whatever standard you want to use.
  3. Kitavan

    Kitavan New Member

    Bread isn't much cop as a bodybuilding food. Near everyone has some allergic response to gluten, wheat's main protein. Wheat contains protease inhibitors meaning if eaten with protein inhibits your digestion of the protein. I know an ex-professional bodybuilder advising a bodybuilder he hated to eat bread to cut up. It was his sense of humor.
  4. Totentanz

    Totentanz Super Moderator Staff Member

    Near everyone? I have no issues with gluten and neither does anyone in my family... I guess we could be genetic outliers but I'm just wondering if you can support your statement with any evidence that is from a legitimate source.
  5. Kitavan

    Kitavan New Member

    My main source here is my reading of Paul Jaminet's work esp. his so-called Perfect Health Diet and other books by Loren Cordain, Art De Vany and Robb Wolf. Jaminet, a Harvard PhD, is a solid researcher not an internet health quack. He always references his assertions to the applicable research articles. It's one of those books that is heavy on real science and footnoting. I'll paste the actual section I was quoting from:

    Gluten sabotages the gut, reducing its surface area and impairing digestion. As all toxins do, gluten inspires an immune response. This immune response helps to clear the gluten from the intestine, preventing a build-up of toxins; however, in the process it makes the intestine inflamed. This is a little known but important point: Wheat triggers gut inflammation in nearly everyone. This immune response kills intestinal cells and makes the gut leaky. (206) There appear to be four levels of immune response to wheat: About 83% of the population develops observable gut inflammation after eating wheat gluten. (207) About 30% of the population develops anti-wheat-gluten antibodies locally in the intestine. (208) About 11% of the population develops systemic (circulating throughout the body) antibodies to wheat gluten. About 0.4% of the population develops systemic antibodies that attack human cells in the intestine, thyroid, pancreas, and elsewhere. This last group is diagnosed with celiac disease. What determines the severity of the response to wheat? The innate immune system provides a nonspecific, first-line reaction to toxins and microbes. Nearly everyone has an innate immune response to wheat: 83% of people tested experienced an innate immune response to wheat gluten, as shown by elevated levels of the immune signaling molecule interleukin-15. Gluten “induces epithelial stress and reprograms intraepithelial lymphocytes into natural killer (NK)-like cells leading to enterocyte apoptosis and an increase in epithelium permeability.” These are the same effects – the death of intestinal cells and gut leakiness – that occur in patients with full-blown celiac disease, only the celiac disease response is more severe. (1) In people who tolerate wheat relatively well, only the innate immune response is triggered by wheat gluten. This immune response helps to clear wheat toxins and results in transient inflammation of the gut. Of course, if wheat is eaten regularly, the gut may be continually inflamed.

    Jaminet's quote 207 is to
    Bernardo D et al. Is gliadin really safe for non-coeliac individuals? Production of interleukin 15 in biopsy culture from non-coeliac individuals challenged with gliadin peptides. Gut 2007 Jun;56(6):889-90.

    I found Jaminet's book a brilliant read, there are notable references to items of bodybuilding interest including snippets about Arnold Schwarzenegger and Vince Gironda. I think I understood most of it by the second or third reading with help from my wife who is biologist!
    Last edited: Oct 18, 2012
  6. grunt11

    grunt11 New Member

    I must fit into this “About 11% of the population develops systemic (circulating throughout the body) antibodies to wheat gluten.” Back in the 80s when I first tried body building wheat germ was all the rage so I started adding it to my diet. I started experiencing what seemed like nasal allergies but could figure out why so I stopped eating the wheat germ and the symptoms when away. Just to confirm I started eating it again and the reaction came right back.

    Since then I hadn’t thought about it since I can eat a reasonable amount of wheat products and have no clinical symptoms but now that I read this I imagine my body is still having an immune response that is likely having an effect even if the symptoms are sub clinical.

    I'm going to have to check to see if other grains have similar issues. Rye bread is my favorite so i hope not.
    Last edited: Oct 18, 2012
  7. Totentanz

    Totentanz Super Moderator Staff Member

    Unfortunately, that study cited is pretty much total garbage. Did you read the study? They tested six people. Six.
  8. Jester

    Jester Well-Known Member

    Geez, that's just about the lowest power for a statistic I can remember seeing. n = 6 ... I don't even think we did in 1st year statistics classes.

    The study might be accurate, might not be. Sample size 6 is just too low to make any supported conclusion. Too low to come near an indication, to be brutally honest.
  9. Numaios

    Numaios New Member

    I do not know why my post was not released, I will try again:

    Nobody is totally adapted to digest gluten properly, see here:

    "No one can properly digest gluten. We do not have the enzymes to break it down. It all depends upon how well our intestinal walls close after we ingest it and how our immune system reacts to it."


    So I try to eat little gluten.
    Last edited: Oct 19, 2012
  10. Kitavan

    Kitavan New Member

    Fair enough point: six people doesn't impress me either. I will now refer to the so-called 'China Health Study'. In contrast to Bernardo's sample this was, I'm fairly sure, the largest health survey/study ever undertaken involving hundreds of thousands of people and mind boggling time and expense.

    "The China Health Study". The whole thing was started in the early 1970's when the Chinese premier, Chou EnLai, was dying of cancer. He initiated a vast study correlating disease rates in China with different geographical areas, culminating in the publishing of a disease atlas of China. Later, the authors of The Study collected dietary and blood data from 65 mostly rural counties in China and correlated them with the data in the disease atlas. Then they printed the data in book form so that you can, for instance, look up myocardial infarction ( heart attack) rates, and see what foods are eaten in areas of China where people are prone to heart attacks. It is a truly epic study...'

    Quoting from Jaminet's 'Perfect Health Diet' book:
    Perhaps the most remarkable correlations in the China Study are those involving grains. Different areas of China eat different staple grains, so the China Study correlations give a good measure of the impact of different grains on health. The correlations were: Wheat had a +67% correlation with heart disease mortality; Rice had a -58% correlation with heart disease mortality; Other grains had a +39% correlation with heart disease mortality. Wheat was by far the most toxic food found in the China Study.

    This is of course based on raw data. I understand 'correlation does not equal an association' but the figures look damning for wheat consumption. Until the experts figure out what is going on here it seems prudent to be wary of the extremely strong correlations with heart disease. The blogger Denise Minger attempts an analysis of the data and what might explain the raw data sets. http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/09/02/the-china-study-wheat-and-heart-disease-oh-my/
    Last edited: Oct 19, 2012
  11. Jester

    Jester Well-Known Member

    I'm not even seeing a 'correlation' here, TBH. Beyond that, I'm not reading anything in your C&P w/regard to gluten.
  12. Totentanz

    Totentanz Super Moderator Staff Member

    I've seen that same study cited as proof that animal proteins are bad and will cause cancer. Pretty sure someone mentioned that one while speaking out against milk before as well.

    I think I will reserve judgement on all that until more evidence is available. For now, I have no issues with gluten or any foods so I won't worry about it. I mean, I guess it's possible that myself and all of my family (on both sides) are just extremely unusual or something, but nobody has ever had dietary induced health issues on either side, only one person died of cancer (which supposedly animal proteins cause cancer now) and I can eat anything without issue (within reason - never tried eating carrion for example) so it's not a huge concern of mine. Honestly, I think most people tend to blow these things out of proportion and it seems like each decade it is a different thing. Remember when carbs were evil? And before that it was fats. Remember when eggs were vilified?
    Now people are saying animal proteins are the devil and gluten will not only give you the aids but also cause your penis to shrink and is responsible for male pattern baldness. This too will pass.
  13. Numaios

    Numaios New Member

    This contradictions happens because nutrition is not a very old science, compared to others. Also nutrition advices givens from governments are influenced by big corporations. I too think there is something wrong in the way we eat in western countries because we have diseases that people in traditional populations does not have, and must be related with food or/and lifestyle. And those diseases are growing, like diabetes, or celiac disease, that has quadrupled in the last 50 years.
    Last edited: Oct 20, 2012
  14. Totentanz

    Totentanz Super Moderator Staff Member

    Of course those diseases could have nothing to do with the fact that people predisposed to them have a greater chance of survival and procreation in first world countries, right?

    Nor could they have anything to do with better detection technologies? No? It has to be diet?
  15. Jester

    Jester Well-Known Member

    When I took a Graduate Certificate which involved some basic pharmaceutical marketing work, my lecturer who was Head of Chemistry opened the course by remarking that the developed world is now so healthy, eating so well and so long-lived that we've managed to do something no other species has done before - routinely die from cancer.

    I'm extremely sceptical of any "study" that is making claims along the lines this one is.
  16. Numaios

    Numaios New Member

    Life expectancy of course is much higher in western countries, but longevity is another concept. People of traditional populations, die at younger ages because of infections, mortality at birth, or accidents, but those who reach old ages, as old as 80, 90 or even 100 years, keep active until last days, and so called western diseases are very rare in them.

    One can think that is genetics, but it is known that when this people travel to western countries and change their lifestyle and way of eating they develope our same western diseases, even with higher intensity. One example of this is eskimo population.

    Another example is the well studied population of Kitava Island, you can see information here:


    I will post more scientific documents later (sorry for my english :))
  17. Totentanz

    Totentanz Super Moderator Staff Member

    Have you considered that it isn't solely diet but activity level that could be the main culprit?

    Look, I'm not saying that diet isn't a problem but it really isn't as bad as you make it sound. The claim most make is that "western diet" started hurting us around the 50s-60s era, once supermarkets and all that started to gain prominence. Fact is... diet was worse earlier on. As an example, my grandfather was a child during the great depression and his family was hit pretty hard. They had ten children in the family and food was so scarce for them that he usually got bread with oleo on it for a typical dinner. Not the healthiest diet, and I would definitely argue that healthy food choices are much more widespread now than they were then. And it definitely is not the majority of Americans eating what you consider the Western Diet, because if that were true then healthy food choices would not be so readily available. See, this is how the market works. If something is not in demand, production goes down.
  18. CDB

    CDB New Member

    I've personally given up on all the BS surrounding nutrition. Like Totentaz says, every few years something new is responsible for all our ills and this starts off a series of cult diets which eventually drop out of prominence as some new evil is blamed. I treat my body as a nonlinear system now. I don't know what the hell is going on inside and I don't care really. Inputs and outputs are what matter, once a year my doc checks the innards to make sure they're processing within range. I change input in terms of nutrition and activity until I like the resulting output. For me that has lead to an overall low carb high fat approach, basically along paleo lines. But I couldn't give a damn less about the gurus or the websites or any of the research supposedly justifying it, nor am I going to proselytize to people about my choice. Do what works for you to achieve the health markers you want, end of story. With regard to diet, the only lasting way the internet has helped me is in researching places to buy coconut and almond bread.
  19. Numaios

    Numaios New Member

    Come on, do not lose confidence in science, here we are, in the most scientific approach to bodybuilding so far :)

    I like this article about how interpret nutriotion news in the media : http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/nutrition-news/media-full-story/index.html

    And I like too this two good scientific websites:


    Coming back to topic: I do eat bread , it is delicious and the best breakfast I can imagine is bread with butter, but It is not my main source of carbs, I try to diversify: sweet potatoes, yams, rice, potatoes, are my other sources. From what I read I try to see what it make sense and when in doubt I choose the middle way.
  20. Numaios

    Numaios New Member

    Yes definetly activity must play a huge role in health, more research has to be done, and I guess it is difficult to separate nutrition influence on health from the rest of lifestyle.

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