"The Dirty Dozen" #4

4. White Flour By Jordan Rubin

One major reason why we have an obesity epidemic is beacuse the stardard American diet (aka-S.A.D...added by Meagan) is weighted heavily with sketchy foods containing refined grains where the wheat has been stripped of wheat germ, bran, and half of the healthy fatty acids during the milling process. The end result is something calld "enriched white flour," but the only reason why enriched wheat flour is bright white is because the wheat stalks are rinsed with various chemical bleaches that sound like a vocabulary test from a high school biology class: nitrogen oxide, chlorine, chloride, nitrosyl, and bezoyl peroxide. The "enriched" adjective comes from the millers adding a few isolated and synthetic vitamins and minerals back into the nutritionally stripped flour, but that's like dressing an American Girl doll in tattered clothes.

Enriched flour, the main ingredient in nearly all the bread and buns on super market shelves as well as a zillion other food items baked in commercial bakeries, is easy to spot on the list of ingredients: it's usually the first item listed. The healthy alternative is purchasing or making your own whole-grain bread from unprocessed whole-grain flour.