Comment by adrian_b
3 hours ago
White bread is not devoid of nutritional value, because it is the cheapest source of proteins known to mankind. Legumes like lentils, beans or peas have a cost per protein content at least 2 to 2.5 times higher than wheat flour. Chicken meat and plant protein isolates have a cost per protein content at least 4 to 5 times higher than wheat flour.
White bread is also one of the cheapest sources of energy, though depending on the geographical location either maize or rice may be slightly cheaper sources of energy, but which provide much less protein.
Among cereal products, wheat bread has the highest protein content, except for oats, but oats are much more expensive per protein content.
If you eat white bread in preference to any other starchy products, like those based on rice, maize or potatoes, this ensures a higher protein intake per a given calories content, which enables a lower consumption of more expensive sources of proteins, like those based on legumes or on meat.
White bread cannot be the only food that one eats, because other kinds of foods must provide other nutrients, but it can provide at a minimum cost major fractions of the daily intake of proteins and energy.
After experimenting with many different healthy diets, I have settled on a variant that I consider optimal, where wheat bread that I bake myself at home typically provides about a third of my daily protein intake, so its nutritional value is quite important (and the fact that it is very tasty is a welcome bonus).
Does whole wheat bread made from the same grain not have the same protein, or does removing all that fiber, flavour, and micronutrients somehow enhance the protein content and render it less expensive?
White flour has a slightly higher protein content (e.g. I bake bread from flour with 13% protein), but the important difference is that it is much cheaper, e.g. at least twice cheaper than whole wheat flour.
The reason for the price difference is unlikely to be due to a more expensive processing technology, but mostly from the economies of large scale processing, because the production of white flour is much greater.
Whole wheat flour has slightly higher amounts of the more valuable nutrients, but due to its high price it is an inefficient way to get those nutrients. A both cheaper and healthier diet can include white bread and larger amounts of other vegetables that are better sources of fiber, vitamins and minerals than whole wheat flour. (E.g. the food that I cook usually includes ingredients like lentils, carrots, parsnips, onions or garlic, broccoli or cauliflower, bell peppers, parsley or dill etc. Spending less on those in order to make more expensive whole wheat bread would provide much less desirable nutrients, so it would be a bad allocation of funds.)
The wheat we eat was bred specifically to grow without nutrients.
Nutrients are divided into micronutrients, most of which are needed in quantities much smaller than 1 gram per day, i.e. vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids and a few amino-acid derivatives, and macronutrients, which form the bulk of what you eat, i.e. carbohydrates, protein and fat.
What you mean is that modern wheat was selected for high production per area, which can be attained only when the seeds contain smaller amounts of micronutrients, so that their limited availability will not inhibit growth.
On the other hand, all plant seeds, including wheat seeds, in their dry form consist almost only of nutrients, unlike the other plant parts, which usually have very little nutrient content.
So wheat seeds and also the white flour made of them are very rich in nutrients, but only in 2 kinds of nutrients, starch and protein.
Animals, including humans, need a great number of essential nutrients in order to survive, around 50 different chemical substances.
White bread provides energy and protein that has a good amino-acid profile, except for low amounts of the amino acid lysine.
For complementary proteins and for the very small amounts of micronutrients that are required for a complete food, one must eat something else.
There exists no natural food that has a perfect composition that would allow humans to live eating only that (except mother milk for small babies).
So anyone must eat a combination of different kinds of foods. People who are rich might choose to eat some paleo diet or some keto diet and it is possible to conceive such diets that are healthy.
However most of the humans must allocate a limited budget for food, and within these constraints there are large areas in various places of the Earth, including Europe, where any healthy diet of optimum cost must include a non-negligible fraction of wheat.
For those who unfortunately suffer of celiac disease, a higher cost of food is unavoidable.
While the macro discussion is very interesting you are completely leaving out any mention of micros.