Nutrient poor foods

I said last time that many westerners are not getting quality nutrition. Our food may be rich in variety but pretty poor in quality. What are these "nutrient poor" foods?

To explain, we'll have a look at bread. Now there are many varieties of bread, but in the days of our grandparents, farmers grew vegetables and grains on local farms and the harvest went straight from the fields to the dinner table. This means bread was baked fresh every day at home with freshly-harvested grains.

As the population grew, farms become bigger and with mechanization and the growth of transport farmers could sell their products to consumers hundreds of miles away.

But then...

They realized this nutritious bread was going mouldy before the consumers even had a chance to buy it. The "shelf life" of the nutritious bread they were shipping was very low. They needed to increase the shelf life of their bread products.

So what did they do?

They found that the bran and wheat germ could be removed from wheat flour to make white bread. Until then bread was made from whole wheat flour, in which these parts are retained and contribute a brownish color.

In addition, the white flour is generally bleached with potassium bromate or chlorine dioxide gas to remove any slight yellow color and make its baking properties more predictable.

Unfortunately most of the vitamins in wheat are removed along with the germ or destroyed in the bleaching process.

So white bread is an example of nutrient poor food and the bread which still has its germ and vitamins intact is the more nutrient dense food.

Since a similar thing has happened to many of the products from the farm, the nutrient poor foods are generally the processed and refined ones.

So look for foods that are closest to their natural state such as fresh fruits and vegetables and other raw foods and you're on your way to better health with more nutrient dense foods.