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I have to tell you I am reluctant to have this discussion. In the four years I’ve worked to develop Plan Z, the Diet By Zola, I have never brought up the subject of bread and baked goods. I felt like if I ignored the subject it would not come up. Instead, I spent a lot of time laying down the framework for the fact that you don’t need bread, donuts or cupcakes in your life. Or any of the rest of it. And it’s true. You can get used to not eating it.

But I know the subject of bread comes up in your home and your offices. It’s like the elephant in the room that will make you feel like an elephant if you eat too much of it.

So before we embark on the subject of bread (and the good versus the evil things about it) I want to define what bread is.

Bread = Sugar = Dessert

If I hammer home anything today this is all I want you to know. Bread is dessert and it has to be treated like a treat. It’s dessert.

Let’s look at the chemistry.

Your liver processes what you eat. It filters out the toxins, converts food into energy and sends the nutrients out to your body for it to use. If there is excess sugar in your diet, that sugar is converted for your body to store as fat. Simple.

By the time your stomach juices break down what you’ve eaten with your fork all your liver sees is the pulpy liquid that’s left. The REAL contents of your food. In that state, your liver can’t tell the difference between a piece of white bread and a Snicker’s bar.

So depending on how much sugar you eat (and I mean CARBOHYDRATES – bread, pasta, potatoes…they’re all sugar), your liver has to deal with it. Your liver cannot allow all that sugar to pass into your bloodstream; that would be toxic to your body. So when your liver detects excess sugar, it gets its friend the pancreas involved. The pancreas has to tone down the sugar.

How does it do that?

By pumping out insulin into our bloodstream.

All of us are so aware of diabetes we know the pancreas sends out insulin. Insulin stimulates the cells in your body to absorb that sugar and get it out of your blood. That’s its first job. When there is more sugar than your body needs, that insulin has no choice but to tell your body to turn the excess into fat. That’s it’s second job.

It isn’t just table sugar that makes you fat. All the carbohydrates you eat have the potential to make you fat because your body breaks all of them down into sugar.

So let’s get back to bread. And the politics and marketing of our food supply.

All of the food marketers, doctors, nutritionists and even the government will tell you that you need carbohydrates to live. Maybe so, but you can get all the carbohydrates you need from the veggies and the fruits you eat. Plus, your body can make carbohydrates. You don’t need bread or pasta or potatoes to accomplish the job. You don’t need bread to live. It’s just a bad habit we picked up a very long time ago. And we convinced ourselves we needed it. We don’t.

Whole Wheat vs. White

All the commercials nowadays use phrases like, whole grain, whole wheat… implying that all of that will make you healthy.

I keep telling people there is little difference between whole wheat and white bread. They are both still wheat. They are both still bread. We don’t need either to survive, and the carbohydrates are killers.

So here’s the difference between whole wheat and white bread:

Whole Wheat Bread (standard whole wheat you find in the grocery store)

• Serving size: 1 piece
• 12 grams of carbs per piece
• 2 grams of fiber
• Glycemic index 70

White Bread (standard white bread in the bread aisle)

• Serving size: 1 piece
• 13 grams of carbs per piece
• 1 gram of fiber
• Glycemic index 73

See how little difference there is? See how we get sucked in?

BTW, the Glycemic Index of a Snicker’s Bar is 68.

The caloric content of the Snicker’s Bar is much higher, but the rate of the spike in blood sugar is actually slightly lower. The faster it shoots up the more insulin is produced to process it.

There are low-carb breads like Paleo Bread which is made from either almond or coconut flour. If you HAVE to have bread you can order this. I tried the almond variety right from the bag. I found it gooey. I enjoyed spreading peanut butter on it but not really the bread. I decided my sliced apple was a better vehicle for eating peanut butter. Then I tried the Paleo bread toasted. It worked fine but all I got for satisfaction was some crunch.

There are also recipes out there if you want to make your own low-carb breads.

Truth is, we can eat a meal with a knife and fork. We don’t have to carry it around in a tortilla or eat with our hands in between two pieces of bread. So we don’t need those carbs.

Now that we’ve had this discussion I’ll leave it up to you.

Cheers,