Should I eat bread?

The low carbohydrate movement has demonized bread.  But is bread fattening? Does it cause inflammation? And if so, why do we call bread the Staff of Life?

The Staff of Life

Imagine calling white bread the staff of life. And yet bread is more responsible for humans ending a nomadic existence. The cultivation of wheat and barley, both in the Nile and in the Euphrates/Tigris rivers, led to civilization.

Calendars, Art, Religion

Not having to forage meant there was time to build a more permanent shelter. It also meant a steady supply of food.

This also meant a calendar was needed because when is the optimal time to plant?

The calendar helped predict when the rivers would swell and recede. The bottom land, with its rich topsoil, is ideal for growing crops.

When you don't need to spend time looking for food, you have time to develop other things:

• Make a religion around grains - the god of the weather, of the earth of the river
• Grain can become the first currency, facilitating trade
• Art because you spend less time seeking food
• Storage systems to overcome times of famine.
• Mathematics, weights, and measures are needed to buy and sell grain
• Writing to make contracts and facilitate trade of the grain
• A government is needed to settle disputes

Storage Systems

Harvested grain can be stored. Storing grain in Egypt was easier because of the dry climate.  Joseph, of the Hebrew Bible, prophesied to the Pharoh of an upcoming famine. As a result, the Pharoh built silos and stored a portion of each harvest.  Seven years later, the harvest failed.  But

The silo system was complex. Filling from the top and arranged in a way that winds would keep the grains cool.  Where did Egyptians get the idea for such an invention? From bees. You can see the bees' natural ventilation system here:

Bees were the symbol of royalty in ancient Egypt. Their honey was tears from the sun god. Bee architecture was copied for the ventilation system for the silos storing grain.  Thus, the storage of grain allowed society to thrive during the time of famine.

Bronze Age to Iron Age

Bread was portable. Served as currency. Allowed armies to march. Facilitated trade between city states. The grain rich regions of the Nile produced grain traded with Mycennians for olive oil and wine.

The Roman emperors gave bread to the poor as welfare. Part of the bread and circus program to keep Romans happy. Bread was imported to Rome, and ultimately, Roman citizens were given "their daily bread."

Rome fell, but bread continued to be important.

Bread until 1920

Grains, including bread, were the major source of calories for most of Europe. From the fall of Rome through the Middle Ages, bread was the main source of calories, along with other grain products.

Bread in the Industrial Age

White bread was considered pure, hygienic, the whiter the better. Brown bread could be contaminated. The ability of mills to separate wheat from chaff, and to make bread without a human hand touching it was irresistible. Industrial bread slicing resulted in "best thing since sliced bread."

White bread became the preferred style of bread from the 1920s until 2009.

Fortification of bread with vitamins in the 1940s made bread a health food.  Pellagra (vitamin B 3 deficiency) and beriberi  (thiamine deficiency) had sadly become common in the US and were eliminated by fortification. So it was indeed revolutionary, but calling it a health food? Even the Federal Trade Commission had issues with this "12 ways campaign" and sued Wonder Bread. The Feds lost.

Age of Aquarius Beats Bread

In spite of the world loving white bread, with baby boomers and Gen X growing up on it, there was rebellion.  Health guru Adele Davis, who sold millions of health books, decried bread for its lack of fiber and urged people to make whole wheat bread at home.

But then came the hippies and the summer of love.  Hundreds of kids were flocking to San Francisco without jobs, without money, and hungry. Feeding these young adults became a group priority.

In 1967, Walt Reynolds came, brought 400 pounds of flour, and baked bread twice a week to feed these kids. They didn't have enough bread trays, so they used coffee cans.

Walt insisted on using whole wheat bread, something rare in those days. But this became part of the counter-culture. Make your own bread. Make it healthy. It became their own bread, their own symbol.

We don't know what happened to Walt Reynolds after this - he lives, changed the way a generation looked at bread, and then disappeared.

Atkins and Bread

The low carb movement of the 1970's meant bread sales went declined. They recovered a bit, but in the second Atkins revolution, bread sales were down in some bakeries by 40%. Today Atkins Corporation sells bread.

But How to Make It

While there were lots of recipes to make bread from Digger Bread, as seen above, home cooks wondered. Then came along another baker who made the bread everyone dreamed of. From the baker of the Zen Retreat - we have this book.

In 2009 whole wheat bread surpassed white bread as the major bread sold over time. With fiber at the core all whole wheat products have increased.

And we can say for certain—yes, you can buy bread—but buy or make your own. Today, I can walk to a local baker who makes whole-grain sourdough bread.

>> Dr. Terry Simpson: Can I eat bread? It's one of the more common questions I'm

asked by patients, and the answer is yes, although I

prefer you eat a whole grain. Did you know that

whole grain bread was all but impossible

to find in grocery stores through the 1980s?

Today, on, four q we will travel

from 10,000 years BC

in the fertile crescent to the hippies in San

Francisco in the 1960s. This day, we

will give you your daily bread. Is it the

staff of life or the scourge causing

modern disease? I am your chief

medical explanationist, doctor Terry Simpson, and

this is for Q Fork

University, where we make sense of the madness,

bust a few myths, and learn a little bit about

food. May or may not be medicine.

The cultivation of barley and wheat is truly what

ended the nomadic life of human beings.

Cultivation of wheat and barley from the Nile river and from the

Tigris and Euphrates river allowed people to finally

stay put. This also meant a

calendar was needed, because when is the optimal time to

plant? When will the waters of, the rivers recede

as they do every year? And by the way, what is a

year when you're not out gathering and

hunting? You have time on your

hands, and because of this, you

have art, because you spend less time seeking through,

you develop storage system to hold the grains and the

bread. You develop mathematics and weights and

measures to measure the bread. You develop a writing

system to make contracts and to contact other people to

facilitate trades of grain. Of course, you have

to have a government system to settle disputes,

and you have to have buildings because.

Buildings and pyramids because why

not? Now, I know you're going to

find some of these low carb ancestral types

saying human beings were worse off after

agriculture than we were as a group of

foraging. You can debate that all

day, but it's not really interesting. We have

modern Manda because of bread.

The baking of bread also influenced worship.

Egyptians worshipped the God called Isis, which was the God

of the mother and the sky, because all you needed was

the earth and the sky to produce good

crops. Romans had a counterpart called Circes, who

is a goddess of the growth of food and plants. And those

Cyralia festivals in Italy were well attended from about

300 bc on.

From that culture of bread

came what we called bread as the

staff of life. It

allowed armies to march, it allowed

civilizations to trade. Bread became

some of the first currencies. Bread and grain could

be stores in time of famine, so people would be able

to survive. You can even find this in

the Hebrew Bible, where Joseph has foretold a

famine in the pharaoh tax grain built

silos, kept them in shelters and on the blog

associated with this

yourdoctorsorders.com or four q.com comma.

You can see excavation of those silos from the

friends at the University of Chicago. Those same

silos were at the time of Joseph.

The great thing about Egypt was their weather was

dry and they had a little bit of wind, so it allowed

grain to be stored for years. And

that stable food source allowed Egypt to

develop as a society from about

5000 bc onwards.

Bread allows you to trade for olive oil, for

bronze, for gold, for wine.

So you have that entire bronze age civilization

and that trade. From the Minoan region

all the way over to the Phoenicians, whole

grain bread was the major source of calories

and little did they know, also vitamins.

Before 1920, bread was made either in

homes or in bakeries by

immigrants. And there was a lot of food borne illness

during that time. And there was a tremendous fear about

bread because the thought of it being touched by

those immigrants was hard for some people

to digest. So when

factory bread making came in, when that

industrial age brought white bread, because white is

pure, and the industrial bread slicing,

because nothing's better than sliced bread all wrapped

up in this clean bit of cellophane not touched by human

hands, that became the preferred

method of bread. Now there were

holdouts. 7th day Adventists baked their own bread. And there were

other health gurus that always said whole grain bread

was better. But when the fortification of

bread came in the 1940s, it wiped out

two common pellagra, which

is a vitamin b three deficiency, and

beriberi, which is a thiamin

deficiency. And if you want to hear about

thiamin deficiency, please listen to my podcast called

the first vitamin bread.

Truly was, in the 1940s, considered

to be a, health food. And some of you may

remember the phrase of wonder bread, that it builds

strong bodies twelve ways

as women went from being homemakers to the

workplace. It sure was a lot easier to buy bread

than to make it. Now, I want you to imagine in

the 1950s, when people aren't baking bread and they

would visit Italy and they would eat

bread that was something completely different than what

they were used to. You would go to these small

villages and for lunch you might have

bread, a little bit of cheese,

some fresh fruit, and maybe some

wine. When Ancel

keys was looking at this, he found that the average person would eat

two thirds of a pound of bread. And he

was amazed that bread was simply made with a high

protein flour. Water used in salt.

Then came the hippies. So

I want to take you back to 1967 and the summer of love

hate Ashbury in San Francisco, when young people

were arriving in San Francisco without jobs,

without prospects, but definitely

hungry. The local hippies,

welcoming these new immigrants developed food

banks. And then out of

nowhere, came Walt Reynolds, who for

three years baked whole bread

twice a week to give it away.

And he insisted on whole wheat

bread. He developed the first

bacons. Now, we don't know the motivation

of Walt, why he came there or why he left without

a trace. But there's no doubt that Walt

Reynolds saved lives. And if you know Walt,

an engineer from Palo Alto, please send me an email.

Whole, wheat bread made by hand, became a part of the

counterculture movement of the hippies. It was

everything to them. And white bread

became a symbol of everything that was wrong with America. It

was plastic, it was corporate, it was white,

it was soft. Make your own bread.

Go against the man. Hippies weren't the

first to decry white bread. The 7th day Adventists

had done that for years. And were some of the few people baking bread at

home. Ann, a, famous health

guru from the time, popular on radio with millions of books

sold. She also thought people should bake their

own bread. Davis even contributed one of

the baking ovens to one of the free bread kitchens in

the San Francisco area. Eating whole

wheat bread was just an act of

rebellion. That's bread. But

how to make bread? Not everyone could be Walt

Reynolds, and get Walt Reynolds around. And when you look

at his bread recipes, it's for making hundreds of pounds of

bread. How do you make your own loaf?

And then came Edward Brown,

who was a baker for a Zen retreat a little south

of San Francisco. He had put together a

bunch of mimeograph papers for those people who wanted

to learn to bake bread. And then he came across a guy

who said, I'll give you a royalty. We're going to make

a book. And he signed it. And he authored what is

called the, Tazahara Bread book, which became an

instant bread best

seller. I even have a copy

of. Later, in the 1970s through

the 1990s, there came one doctor, Robert Atkins, who

said, white bread, white flour, white sugar,

white rice was poison, and if you want to

lose weight, don't eat those things. As a

result, corporate bread sales went

down and the interest in whole grain bread

went up. And in fact,

2009 marked the inflection point

where more whole grain bread was sold than

white bread. Today, you can almost walk down

any street, find a new bakery selling some

whole grain sourdough that you have to cut yourself.

It's nutty, chewy,

delicious, and you can see why

people were able to survive off of this as their

major source of calories in western Europe during

those middle ages. So when you

hear people decry the old white, puffy, marshmallowy

bread that was fortified with vitamins, don't

be too arrogant. Just

remember that fortification of white bread in the

1940s ended nutritional deficiencies in the

United States.

It wasn't perfect, it didn't have fiber,

but it allowed a group of baby boomers and Gen

xers to grow up strong and healthy.

Today, however, be grateful that in

almost any store, you can buy that nutty,

chewy, delicious, fiber filled, vitamin

naturally sourced bread.

It's not bad for you. Unless, of course, you have

a gluten problem because you have celiac disease or have a wheat

allergy. But otherwise,

bread made by your local artisanal

baker, or even commercially, can be a

delicious, wonderful thing. I prefer

it dipped in a delicious olive

oil, maybe with a little bit of cheese, maybe with

a little balsamic vinegar. And a park

can be a wonderful place to have that

while enjoying the beautiful sunshine.

Can you eat bread? Please do.

New bread. It is the staff of

life. This was researched and written

by me, Doctor Terry Simpson. And, while I am a doctor, I am not

your doctor. And if you need any medical information,

I'm not your guy. Please see your own board certified,

western trained physician. Not a chiropractor,

not a naturopath, but a real doctor.

Simpler media distributes this. And my good friend, the pod God.

Mister Ivo Terra. Enjoy a piece of

good sourdough bread, my friends. We'll see you next

time.

Hey, Ivo, you know what?

I've got this great bakery down the street,

so when you and the other doctor come and visit,

we're going to have some great bread with olive oil. Looking forward to

seeing you sometime soon.

Apropos of nothing, are

those hippies down the street as well?