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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, 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.

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.

Whole Wheat vs. White

Baked Spinach Artichoke Dip

Talk about comfort food. This is the pure definition.