A breakdown of the ingredients you’ll find in an average loaf of supermarket bread

  • June 14, 2024
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  • Christophe

The good, the bad and the downright ugly!

Bread is said to be one of the oldest human-made foods. In a recent discovery, archaeologists found scraps of flatbread around a fireplace at a 14,500-year-old Natufian site in Jordan’s north-eastern desert – dating from 4,000 years before the emergence of the Neolithic agricultural way of life. For thousands of years, basic bread remained largely unchanged, even with the development of modern strains of grains such as wheat. However in the UK, over the past 10-or-so years with the emergence of ‘convenience food’, bread has started to become something different. In this article we’ll look through the ingredients on a typical loaf of bread you’ll find in almost any UK supermarket.

Index

Ingredients in an average loaf of bread

Here are the ingredients for a loaf of Warburtons Medium White bread (800g) – typical of almost any that can be found in any UK supermarket:

  • Wheat Flour [with Calcium, Iron, Niacin (B3) and Thiamin (B1)],
  • Water
  • Yeast
  • Salt
  • Vegetable Oils (Rapeseed and Sustainable Palm)
  • Soya Flour
  • Preservative: Calcium Propionate
  • Emulsifier: E472e
  • Emulsifier: E481
  • Flour Treatment Agent: Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C )

The nutritional breakdown includes 224kcal per 100g, 2% fat (0.5% saturated fat), 46.4% carbohydrate (3% sugars), 2.3% fibre, 9.1% protein, and the bread is almost 1% salt

Flour – mandatory fortification

In the UK, the history of flour regulations date back to the 13th century. More recently, the Bread and Flour Regulations (1998) specify that flour should be fortified with vitamins and minerals, namely, Calcium, Iron, Niacin (B3) and Thiamin (B1). You’ll now find these listed in the ingredients for all white and brown flour, including organic, with an exception for Wholemeal flour as the wheat bran and wheat germ from the grain included in the flour are natural sources of vitamins and minerals. On the subject of wholemeal four it’s worth noting the regulations also specify that bread labelled or advertised as ‘wholemeal’ must contain 100% wholemeal flour, and ‘wheat germ’ must have at least 10% added processed wheat germ.

Folic acid or folate

In early 2024, after several years of consultation, DEFRA announced confirmed changed to the Bread and Flour Regulations (1998) including an increase in the levels of calcium carbonate, iron, and niacin in non-wholemeal flour, with the addition of folic acid. They have also announced a new ‘legal description that means wholemeal flour must consist of the whole product from the milling and grinding of cleaned cereal’.

Folic acid is the synthetic version of the vitamin folate, also known as vitamin B9, and is a water-soluble vitamin. We have a dietary intake requirement of 200mcg per day as this vitamin is necessary to produce and maintain new cells. It’s therefore especially important for women during pregnancy, where a dose of 400mcg per day is recommended to reduce the developmental problems in the foetus.

“The number of pregnancies affected by life-threatening issues such as spina bifida could fall by more than a fifth as the government moves one step closer to actively adding folic acid to non-wholemeal flour”

DEFRA September 2022

It’s worth noting here, however, that although folic acid is suitable for almost anyone, there are exceptions. Most notably, anyone who has ever had an allergic reaction to it, people with some types of anaemia, some people with cancer, people having a type of kidney dialysis called haemodialysis, or people who have a stent in their heart

Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C )

Vitamin C – also known as ascorbic acid – is added to bread to strengthen the glutens in the flour. This helps the dough rise more quickly. Vitamin C is naturally occurring in foods like fruit, and has several vital function within the human body. It’s almost impossible you’d be able to ingest too much vitamin C from bread (an average adult should be getting about 40mg per day and bread typically contains relatively tiny amounts – too much is considered over 1000mg per day and may cause stomach pain, diarrhoea or flatulence)

Water, yeast, and salt

Bread in it’s simplest forms will contain water and flour. Salt is often added to improve the flavour. Yeast feeds on the carbohydrates in the flour, releasing carbon dioxide which a traditional way to give bread its distinctive rise. Yeast also adds many of the distinctive flavours and aromas we’re all familiar with to bread.

Vegetable Oils

Bread doesn’t require added fats, however, butter is a traditional ingredient that acts as a dough enrichment agent – it tenderises the bread dough and limits the gluten development. This creates a softer, more tender crumb and a richer flavour. In some Mediterranean bread you might also often find added extra-virgin olive oil as its distinctive flavour adds to the taste and texture. Adding either butter or un-refined olive oil, according to the research, is not a danger to health (although there is a strong suggestion that too much dairy fat may affect health adversely)

Vegetable and seed oils such as sunflower, rapeseed, etc. are processed and have been shown to have an adverse affect on health, for example, causing things like inflammation and damage to arteries. The processing of these oils involves refining, bleaching, and deodorising, usually using a chemical called hexane. These oils are known as RBD oils and is what you probably have in the kitchen cupboard – if it doesn’t say ‘extra-virgin’ on the bottle, then that’s what you’ve got. Besides taking a healthy oil and making it harmful to health, the refining process process also changes the nutritional content of oils, reducing the levels of vitamins & antioxidants and alters the Omega-3 to Omega-6 ratio. 

Why are the oils refined? Refining removes flavour and colour, and improves shelf life of the oil – it creates a consistently cheap, bland, virtually colourless, and odourless oil. If a food manufacturer simply wants to keep their costs down and improve the shelf life of the food they’re producing, this is the perfect type of oil. The other really important benefit to food producers is that the oils are interchangeable. if you list several oils in the ingredients, you can simply buy the cheapest on the day and use that one without changing the look, feel or taste of your product.

Why do they add these oils to bread? One reason that bread manufacturers add these RBD oils to bread is that they help tenderise the bread but much more cheaply than adding butter – these oils are long lasting and don’t need to be refrigerated. It lengthens the shelf-life of the bread and acts as a preservative. Adding cheap oils also increases the weight of bread and it doesn’t evaporate like water would which slows the bread drying out. The benefits are sadly almost virtually all for the manufacturers and not for the consumers.

Soya flour

Soya flour is added to bread and acts as a dough strengthener and bleacher. It contain the enzyme lipoxygenase which speeds up the dough developing time, and provides an increase in water absorption. This improves the handling and machine-ability of the dough, as well as giving the bread better volume and crumb softness. 

There is very little good science suggesting that soya flour has a negative effect on human health. When negative effects have been observed, they often associated with the consumption of very large amounts of soy. Here are the main common concerns about the ingestion of soy:

  • Cancer association – most studies find no association
  • Reduced thyroid function – studies on humans generally find little negative effect
  • Dangerous for babies – studies usually fail to observe any long-term negative effects for healthy, full-term babies
  • Digestive issues – animal studies suggest that soy may reduce the gut’s barrier function which may lead to inflammation and digestive issues
  • Oestrogen-mimicking effects (or feminizing effects in men) – human studies have only found a weak link

Calcium Propionate (E282)

Calcium propionate is added to bread as a preservative. It extends the shelf life of bread by interfering with the growth and reproduction of microorganisms. It’s also commonly found in baked foods, dairy products, drinks, alcoholic drinks, and processed meats.

This additive is generally recognised as safe by the World Health Organisation (WHO), however, it has been linked to headaches and migraines in some. A human study linked calcium propionate intake to the increased production of insulin and glucagon, and a study involving 27 children suggested that some may experience irritability, restlessness, poor attention, and sleep issues after ingesting bread containing calcium propionate. More human studies are needed in these areas though.

Emulsifier: E472e

E472e, also known as DATEM, is a very common ingredient in bread these days, and one that has been linked to many very serious and adverse health effects such as heart fibrosis, cardiovascular disease and adrenal overgrowth. This is an ingredient I personally avoid as much as possible. Rather than repeat everything here again, here is an article I wrote in February about it

Emulsifier: E481

E481 or Sodium stearoyl-2-lactylate (sodium stearoyl lactylate or SSL) is used to improve the mix tolerance and volume of processed foods. It’s commonly found in bread, cake, flour products, ice cream, coffee, soft drinks, creams, cookies, crackers, and pasta. An emulsifier is added to stabilise high-fat bread by allowing oil and water to bond, stopping the bread becoming hardened thus increasing shelf-life. It has been approved as a safe ingredient by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), as well as Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA). 

Summary

Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) are pretty easy to spot. One way is to simply read through the ingredients. If you spot anything you wouldn’t find in an ordinary kitchen, it’s likely to be an ultra processed food. However, as we’ve seen, just because we might not recognise an ingredient, it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily bad for us. But by the same token, some ingredients such as the emulsifiers E472e may be very bad for our health.

You don’t need to learn about every single UPF ingredient. Improving our diets is about a series of small steps in the right direction – one of which is to change our food buying habits.

One way to do this is, as Prof. Chris van Tulleken talks about in his excellent book Ultra Processed People, is to simply evaluate what the ‘purpose’ of the food we find on the shelves is. I specifically used the example of a loaf of bread as I think this typifies the problem. Convenience foods or UPFs are simply designed to make money for the manufacturer. They’ve been optimised over many years to part us from our cash as efficiently as possible whilst producing the minimum amount of wastage. They’re not designed to be healthy and nutritious, they’re simply designed to make us buy them. in other words, the purpose of these foods is to make money.

When you make a home-made meal for your family, the purpose of that food is to be nutritious, healthy and filling. You don’t think to yourself about saving money at the expense of the health of your family. You don’t add more oils, salt and sugar, simply so your family eats more. You don’t swap healthy ingredients for dangerous ones just because they’re cheap and you can ‘get away with it’. You don’t add dangerous chemicals just to improve the ‘texture’! That is the purpose of UPF and that is exactly why we should be avoiding it.

Bread should be a simple food we can trust. Instead we now have to be constantly on guard and vigilant. Manufacturers of UPF foods are not our friends and they certainly don’t care about us. They use every trick in the book such as huge marketing budgets, clever pricing, addictive ingredients, fancy packaging, and specious health claims just to part us from our money.

References

Archaeobotanical evidence reveals the origins of bread 14,400 years ago in north-eastern Jordan – https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1801071115

From Quern to Computer: The history of flour milling https://new.millsarchive.org/2016/09/06/from-quern-to-computer-the-history-of-flour-milling/9/

Folic Acid https://www.nhs.uk/medicines/folic-acid/

Who can and cannot take Folic Acid https://www.nhs.uk/medicines/folic-acid/who-can-and-cannot-take-folic-acid/

About folic acid https://www.nhs.uk/medicines/folic-acid/about-folic-acid/

What Does Butter Do to Bread Dough? https://www.theperfectloaf.com/what-does-butter-do-to-bread-dough/

Bread Science 101 https://www.exploratorium.edu/explore/cooking/bread-science

Is rapeseed oil unhealthy and inflammatory? https://hunterandgatherfoods.com/blogs/real-food-lifestyle/is-rape-seed-oil-unhealthy-inflammatory

Refined oils and why you should avoid them https://happilyunprocessed.com/the-basics/refined-oils-and-why-you-should-never-eat-them/

Enrichment of bread with Soy Flour https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6891578/

Controlled trial of cumulative behavioural effects of a common bread preservative https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12173999/

The short-chain fatty acid propionate increases glucagon and FABP4 production, impairing insulin action in mice and humans https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31019023/

What is Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate (E481) in Food & is SSL Vegan? https://foodadditives.net/emulsifiers/sodium-stearoyl-lactylate/

Food additives: Assessing the impact of exposure to permitted emulsifiers on bowel and metabolic health – introducing the FADiets study https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6899614/

The short-chain fatty acid propionate increases glucagon and FABP4 production, impairing insulin action in mice and humans – https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31019023/

Christophe

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