Episode 54
Bread: The Evil Staff of Life
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.
Transcript
>> Dr. Terry Simpson: Can I eat bread? It's one of the more common questions I'm
Speaker:asked by patients, and the answer is yes, although I
Speaker:prefer you eat a whole grain. Did you know that
Speaker:whole grain bread was all but impossible
Speaker:to find in grocery stores through the 1980s?
Speaker:Today, on, four q we will travel
Speaker:from 10,000 years BC
Speaker:in the fertile crescent to the hippies in San
Speaker:Francisco in the 1960s. This day, we
Speaker:will give you your daily bread. Is it the
Speaker:staff of life or the scourge causing
Speaker:modern disease? I am your chief
Speaker:medical explanationist, doctor Terry Simpson, and
Speaker:this is for Q Fork
Speaker:University, where we make sense of the madness,
Speaker:bust a few myths, and learn a little bit about
Speaker:food. May or may not be medicine.
Speaker:The cultivation of barley and wheat is truly what
Speaker:ended the nomadic life of human beings.
Speaker:Cultivation of wheat and barley from the Nile river and from the
Speaker:Tigris and Euphrates river allowed people to finally
Speaker:stay put. This also meant a
Speaker:calendar was needed, because when is the optimal time to
Speaker:plant? When will the waters of, the rivers recede
Speaker:as they do every year? And by the way, what is a
Speaker:year when you're not out gathering and
Speaker:hunting? You have time on your
Speaker:hands, and because of this, you
Speaker:have art, because you spend less time seeking through,
Speaker:you develop storage system to hold the grains and the
Speaker:bread. You develop mathematics and weights and
Speaker:measures to measure the bread. You develop a writing
Speaker:system to make contracts and to contact other people to
Speaker:facilitate trades of grain. Of course, you have
Speaker:to have a government system to settle disputes,
Speaker:and you have to have buildings because.
Speaker:Buildings and pyramids because why
Speaker:not? Now, I know you're going to
Speaker:find some of these low carb ancestral types
Speaker:saying human beings were worse off after
Speaker:agriculture than we were as a group of
Speaker:foraging. You can debate that all
Speaker:day, but it's not really interesting. We have
Speaker:modern Manda because of bread.
Speaker:The baking of bread also influenced worship.
Speaker:Egyptians worshipped the God called Isis, which was the God
Speaker:of the mother and the sky, because all you needed was
Speaker:the earth and the sky to produce good
Speaker:crops. Romans had a counterpart called Circes, who
Speaker:is a goddess of the growth of food and plants. And those
Speaker:Cyralia festivals in Italy were well attended from about
Speaker:300 bc on.
Speaker:From that culture of bread
Speaker:came what we called bread as the
Speaker:staff of life. It
Speaker:allowed armies to march, it allowed
Speaker:civilizations to trade. Bread became
Speaker:some of the first currencies. Bread and grain could
Speaker:be stores in time of famine, so people would be able
Speaker:to survive. You can even find this in
Speaker:the Hebrew Bible, where Joseph has foretold a
Speaker:famine in the pharaoh tax grain built
Speaker:silos, kept them in shelters and on the blog
Speaker:associated with this
Speaker:yourdoctorsorders.com or four q.com comma.
Speaker:You can see excavation of those silos from the
Speaker:friends at the University of Chicago. Those same
Speaker:silos were at the time of Joseph.
Speaker:The great thing about Egypt was their weather was
Speaker:dry and they had a little bit of wind, so it allowed
Speaker:grain to be stored for years. And
Speaker:that stable food source allowed Egypt to
Speaker:develop as a society from about
Speaker:5000 bc onwards.
Speaker:Bread allows you to trade for olive oil, for
Speaker:bronze, for gold, for wine.
Speaker:So you have that entire bronze age civilization
Speaker:and that trade. From the Minoan region
Speaker:all the way over to the Phoenicians, whole
Speaker:grain bread was the major source of calories
Speaker:and little did they know, also vitamins.
Speaker:Before 1920, bread was made either in
Speaker:homes or in bakeries by
Speaker:immigrants. And there was a lot of food borne illness
Speaker:during that time. And there was a tremendous fear about
Speaker:bread because the thought of it being touched by
Speaker:those immigrants was hard for some people
Speaker:to digest. So when
Speaker:factory bread making came in, when that
Speaker:industrial age brought white bread, because white is
Speaker:pure, and the industrial bread slicing,
Speaker:because nothing's better than sliced bread all wrapped
Speaker:up in this clean bit of cellophane not touched by human
Speaker:hands, that became the preferred
Speaker:method of bread. Now there were
Speaker:holdouts. 7th day Adventists baked their own bread. And there were
Speaker:other health gurus that always said whole grain bread
Speaker:was better. But when the fortification of
Speaker:bread came in the 1940s, it wiped out
Speaker:two common pellagra, which
Speaker:is a vitamin b three deficiency, and
Speaker:beriberi, which is a thiamin
Speaker:deficiency. And if you want to hear about
Speaker:thiamin deficiency, please listen to my podcast called
Speaker:the first vitamin bread.
Speaker:Truly was, in the 1940s, considered
Speaker:to be a, health food. And some of you may
Speaker:remember the phrase of wonder bread, that it builds
Speaker:strong bodies twelve ways
Speaker:as women went from being homemakers to the
Speaker:workplace. It sure was a lot easier to buy bread
Speaker:than to make it. Now, I want you to imagine in
Speaker:the 1950s, when people aren't baking bread and they
Speaker:would visit Italy and they would eat
Speaker:bread that was something completely different than what
Speaker:they were used to. You would go to these small
Speaker:villages and for lunch you might have
Speaker:bread, a little bit of cheese,
Speaker:some fresh fruit, and maybe some
Speaker:wine. When Ancel
Speaker:keys was looking at this, he found that the average person would eat
Speaker:two thirds of a pound of bread. And he
Speaker:was amazed that bread was simply made with a high
Speaker:protein flour. Water used in salt.
Speaker:Then came the hippies. So
Speaker:I want to take you back to 1967 and the summer of love
Speaker:hate Ashbury in San Francisco, when young people
Speaker:were arriving in San Francisco without jobs,
Speaker:without prospects, but definitely
Speaker:hungry. The local hippies,
Speaker:welcoming these new immigrants developed food
Speaker:banks. And then out of
Speaker:nowhere, came Walt Reynolds, who for
Speaker:three years baked whole bread
Speaker:twice a week to give it away.
Speaker:And he insisted on whole wheat
Speaker:bread. He developed the first
Speaker:bacons. Now, we don't know the motivation
Speaker:of Walt, why he came there or why he left without
Speaker:a trace. But there's no doubt that Walt
Speaker:Reynolds saved lives. And if you know Walt,
Speaker:an engineer from Palo Alto, please send me an email.
Speaker:Whole, wheat bread made by hand, became a part of the
Speaker:counterculture movement of the hippies. It was
Speaker:everything to them. And white bread
Speaker:became a symbol of everything that was wrong with America. It
Speaker:was plastic, it was corporate, it was white,
Speaker:it was soft. Make your own bread.
Speaker:Go against the man. Hippies weren't the
Speaker:first to decry white bread. The 7th day Adventists
Speaker:had done that for years. And were some of the few people baking bread at
Speaker:home. Ann, a, famous health
Speaker:guru from the time, popular on radio with millions of books
Speaker:sold. She also thought people should bake their
Speaker:own bread. Davis even contributed one of
Speaker:the baking ovens to one of the free bread kitchens in
Speaker:the San Francisco area. Eating whole
Speaker:wheat bread was just an act of
Speaker:rebellion. That's bread. But
Speaker:how to make bread? Not everyone could be Walt
Speaker:Reynolds, and get Walt Reynolds around. And when you look
Speaker:at his bread recipes, it's for making hundreds of pounds of
Speaker:bread. How do you make your own loaf?
Speaker:And then came Edward Brown,
Speaker:who was a baker for a Zen retreat a little south
Speaker:of San Francisco. He had put together a
Speaker:bunch of mimeograph papers for those people who wanted
Speaker:to learn to bake bread. And then he came across a guy
Speaker:who said, I'll give you a royalty. We're going to make
Speaker:a book. And he signed it. And he authored what is
Speaker:called the, Tazahara Bread book, which became an
Speaker:instant bread best
Speaker:seller. I even have a copy
Speaker:of. Later, in the 1970s through
Speaker:the 1990s, there came one doctor, Robert Atkins, who
Speaker:said, white bread, white flour, white sugar,
Speaker:white rice was poison, and if you want to
Speaker:lose weight, don't eat those things. As a
Speaker:result, corporate bread sales went
Speaker:down and the interest in whole grain bread
Speaker:went up. And in fact,
Speaker:2009 marked the inflection point
Speaker:where more whole grain bread was sold than
Speaker:white bread. Today, you can almost walk down
Speaker:any street, find a new bakery selling some
Speaker:whole grain sourdough that you have to cut yourself.
Speaker:It's nutty, chewy,
Speaker:delicious, and you can see why
Speaker:people were able to survive off of this as their
Speaker:major source of calories in western Europe during
Speaker:those middle ages. So when you
Speaker:hear people decry the old white, puffy, marshmallowy
Speaker:bread that was fortified with vitamins, don't
Speaker:be too arrogant. Just
Speaker:remember that fortification of white bread in the
Speaker:1940s ended nutritional deficiencies in the
Speaker:United States.
Speaker:It wasn't perfect, it didn't have fiber,
Speaker:but it allowed a group of baby boomers and Gen
Speaker:xers to grow up strong and healthy.
Speaker:Today, however, be grateful that in
Speaker:almost any store, you can buy that nutty,
Speaker:chewy, delicious, fiber filled, vitamin
Speaker:naturally sourced bread.
Speaker:It's not bad for you. Unless, of course, you have
Speaker:a gluten problem because you have celiac disease or have a wheat
Speaker:allergy. But otherwise,
Speaker:bread made by your local artisanal
Speaker:baker, or even commercially, can be a
Speaker:delicious, wonderful thing. I prefer
Speaker:it dipped in a delicious olive
Speaker:oil, maybe with a little bit of cheese, maybe with
Speaker:a little balsamic vinegar. And a park
Speaker:can be a wonderful place to have that
Speaker:while enjoying the beautiful sunshine.
Speaker:Can you eat bread? Please do.
Speaker:New bread. It is the staff of
Speaker:life. This was researched and written
Speaker:by me, Doctor Terry Simpson. And, while I am a doctor, I am not
Speaker:your doctor. And if you need any medical information,
Speaker:I'm not your guy. Please see your own board certified,
Speaker:western trained physician. Not a chiropractor,
Speaker:not a naturopath, but a real doctor.
Speaker:Simpler media distributes this. And my good friend, the pod God.
Speaker:Mister Ivo Terra. Enjoy a piece of
Speaker:good sourdough bread, my friends. We'll see you next
Speaker:time.
Speaker:Hey, Ivo, you know what?
Speaker:I've got this great bakery down the street,
Speaker:so when you and the other doctor come and visit,
Speaker:we're going to have some great bread with olive oil. Looking forward to
Speaker:seeing you sometime soon.
Speaker:Apropos of nothing, are
Speaker:those hippies down the street as well?
