THE
BREAD QUESTION
IT IS SPIRITUAL AND PHYSICAL
FOR
HEART AND HEALTH
Growing up, my father
(who did not eat white flour, white sugar, or margarine) knew there was
something wrong with the food culture in America. To prove his view to his
children, he would sit on a loaf of white bread; it went “flat as a pancake.”
My mother stopped buying white bread when we were young.
She didn’t stop there.
It is my mother’s legacy. She began making whole wheat bread. Before finding
the latest news on health was convenient, she knew instinctively: whole grains
made sense.
Since my father and
mother began the emphasis on eating healthy food, it was natural for their
eight children to know there is a difference between processed and whole food.
It is not just for my
husband and me now. Our son and daughter in law asked me to show them how to
make bread, then again brought it up, “When we come over are we going to make
bread?” Below is a simple recipe for making whole wheat bread.
The naturally harvested
wheat includes the bran, endosperm and germ. An unwitting consumer is denied
the benefit of whole grain when it is taken apart and sold separately.
If the endosperm is
processed (bleached white), then made into bread, it is minus the powerful
nutrition found in the whole grain. The bread made from it becomes the airy
white loaf most often sold in grocery stores at home and the world over. The
white flour is eye appealing and has a much longer shelf life. The bran and
germ are gone from the grain and sold separately.
This “allenpuff” which
my father called it, could be one major reason for health problems. When a lifetime
of devitalized bread with no heart strengthening power from protein, and
minerals is our regular diet we suffer. Often the food industry separates the
most nutritious parts and sells them separately.
Bread bleached and degermed
are not health building. Like fast food available everywhere, it is a trap.
Easy, quick, cheap, habit forming, addictive. Fad diets confuse and frustrate
us and work against hope for good health. When a better Way is right in front
of you, take it! “Who
satisfies your mouth with good things so that your youth is renewed like the
eagles.” Psalm 103:5
The combination of “fine flour, oil and honey” are included in
Scripture all the way through. Until in the New Testament we see Jesus as the
perfect picture of healthful bread. “And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread
of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me
shall never thirst.” John 6:35
"I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat
of this bread, he shall live forever: and the bread that I will give is my
flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." John 6:51.
