Why I love Sourdough Bread, and include it in my diet;
Let’s talk about sourdough bread!
Sourdough bread was an ancestral staple, and is currently, a modern wonder. Ingredients are everything, so to be clear, I’m talking about organic, wild ambient yeast, slow fermented [24-72 hours] sourdough bread. Y’know, the traditional kind. The kind made with water, salt, flour, and time. No creepy additives, stabilizers, commercial yeast or industrial seed oils (looking at you @Wholefoods).
So, now that we’ve defined ‘sourdough.’ Let’s move on.
First of all, I’m sure most of us have been taught that whole wheat bread is the healthiest bread for us. This is actually very misleading on account of anti-nutrients. Remember those? Briefly explained they are a plant’s defense mechanism against being eaten, and they are toxic to humans and animals. Typically anti-nutrients are strongest in unripe fruits, around the seeds, hull, germ, bran, shell, etc., or in the sprouts of plant foods. This is all done in the best interest of allowing the seed to survive until it can be germinated and matured properly. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but— plants don’t give a shit about you.
That also means that sprouting seeds and nuts raises anti-nutritional factors, in many cases— which is one reason why I’m not thrilled with sprouting most things. Suffice it to say, there is nuance in everything we do as humans, and until you build a mental framework for understanding the nuances, it’s best to focus on the basics.
So, back to the basics!
Traditional sourdough is a nourishing staple, suitable to nearly any dietary preference. It provides a source of probiotics [good gut bugs], as well as prebiotics [food for good gut bugs]. The fermentation process has yielded the minerals found in wheat [potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, iron, and zinc] mostly [meaning up to 90%] bioavailable to the consumer. It’s done this by successfully breaking down phytic acid, an anti-nutrient that binds to minerals rendering them useless to us, by continuing to bind to them even once inside your body.
Essentially, long fermenting your dough is a process of pre-digestion outside the body, so once we ingest it, it’s more bioavailable to our bodies. Personally, I prefer to use organic white flour, to reduce the anti-nutritional factors that I begin with, but I love the complexity of a whole wheat sourdough, or one with rye incorporated. There really isn’t a ‘right’ answer to this quandary, other than just long fermentation, all the way, across the board, no matter what flour you use and when you are not fermenting your wheat, try using unbleached, organic, and white, especially if you are dealing with sensitivities.
Learning from history and science
During the fermentation process the bacteria and native yeasts ‘eat’ the other lectins, as well as most of the sugar, while breaking down the gluten as much as 95% in long fermented doughs. In wheat these anti-nutrients are found primarily in the germ, and the bran. This is why it’s actually better for you to make and eat white bread, not ‘whole wheat.’ Unless it’s long fermented, in which case it’s a tough argument, because it’s all good.
Traditionally, white bread was something that the upper class ate, because it was known to be easier on your stomach, and better absorbed; whereas whole wheat was made for the lower classes who couldn’t afford the pricier ‘white’ flour which had been separated from it’s germ and bran [the parts that give wheat color, but also contain the anti-nutritional factors]. Using whole wheat was cheaper due to requiring less work overall, and fermenting it offered better digestive absorption. We now understand this gut acceptance is due to substantially better bioavailability of nutrients, and a massive decrease of antinutritional factors due to the predigestion of the fermentation process.
This is why using whole wheat to make sourdough is not a ‘bad thing’, because the fermentation process renders most of the minerals and polyphenols bioavailable, by significantly lowering, and almost removing entirely the potency of the anti-nutrients. Sourdough also delivers breads with higher fiber [soluble and insoluble] and higher resistant starch content [food for our good gut buddies!].
Where your so called ‘wheat sensitivity’ is most likely coming from:
Hint: It might not be the infamous gluten.
One particularly heinous anti-nutrient found in grains and legumes is called WGA [wheat germ agglutin] is very toxic and bioactive on human immune cells. It damages the epithelium layer, contributes negatively to intestinal permeability, and triggers weight gain, by instructing cells to make fat from any sugar floating around. It also attaches to insulin receptors in the body, which prevents insulin from docking and results in your muscles and brain being unable to get the sugar they need to thrive, which makes your brain scream to your cells, “I’m still hungry!!” causing you to overeat and in the long run this winds up killing off (starving) brain cells and peripheral nerves, which results in degenerative brain diseases like Parkinson’s and dementia and more. Yummy. It’s so toxic to our human bodies it demands its own article in the future.
It has also recently been found to inhibit cells from accumulating the vitamin D receptor, possibly a big reason for the uptick in vitamin D deficiencies today. Many people who believe they suffer from wheat intolerances actually are sensitive to WGA, phytic acids, and other anti-nutritional factors, which could be resolved by buying organic white, or whole wheat flour, and making long fermented sourdough bread without industrial fillers.
On top of anti-nutrients in wheat, most modern wheat [and other grains] is routinely sprayed with with a well-known toxic, carcinogenic pesticide called Roundup, a despicable modern invention that is actively destroying our guts. I won’t go too deep down this rabbit hole, but if you care, google Monsanto & Roundup [Bayer, also an aspirin producer], as well as glyphosate.
There has been a massive and ever growing body of the research on the detrimental effects of these pesticides on the environment and our bodies for DECADES. This research is easy to find and access, and abundantly clear that this pesticide is a known cause of cancer, specifically non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, as well as others. Instead of taking the product off the shelves, or giving them a well deserved cancer warning label, companies like Bayer and Monsanto have opted to simply pay out settlements to whistleblowers. As an excerpt from an article in the New York Times states, “Now Bayer is moving to put those troubles behind it, agreeing to pay more than $10 billion to settle tens of thousands of claims while continuing to sell the product without adding warning labels about its safety.” Obviously, this is a company we can trust with our personal health journeys and mass food and pharmaceutical productions! *She says in a desperately sarcastic tone.*
So with all that in mind, we’ll suffice it to say— YES, ORGANIC ACTUALLY MATTERS, especially in grains, and soft bodied veggies, and animal foods. Okay, in everything.
Delicious solutions to malicious problems:
My suggestion to you is the same as always— educate yourself, for yourself. Remove yourself from mainstream programming, and dive deep into the research available. Please use the resources at the end of every one of my posts as an optional starting point.
In the meantime make small substitutions in your diet to ever greater choices towards food freedom. That can be as simple as going from whole wheat to white bread. Then from white bread to sourdough bread, then on to long fermented sourdough, and finally to long fermenting it and baking it in your own kitchen, and using the toss bits to create crackers, biscuits, cinnamon rolls, crepes, pancakes, waffles or any of your other bread-y needs.
I petition you to start eating sourdough bread. Armed with this knowledge, and the fact that grass fed butter has a naturally occurring perfect ratio of omega-3 to omega-6, sourdough toast and butter is an excellent snack! Or easily made into a meal by adding an egg, and maybe even using marrow butter instead of regular butter.
Marrow butter is a nourishing food made by flash roasting bones with accessible marrow, scooping it out and blending it with pastured, organic butter, salt, spices and herbs. You can plop it on veggies, plaster it on toast, use it to cook with, or heck, I don’t know, eat it with a spoon!
Delicious solutions to malicious problems! Eating healthy should NOT be a chore. It should be an exciting journey into un-taming ourselves and re-incorporating our bodies into the natural world through the foods we eat, what we put onto our bodies, and into our surroundings. Getting outside and learning how to become a part of nature again, as we were always meant to be.
Resources:
The Plant Paradox by Dr. Steven Gundry, M.D.
Genius Foods by Max Lugavere
Wildcrafted Fermentation by Pascual Bauder
Anti-nutrients: http://jairjp.com/NOVEMBER%202014/09%20PARUL%20REVIEW.pdf
Anti-nutrient effects of Phytochemicals: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303297561_Biological_Functions_and_Anti-nutritional_Effects_of_Phytochemicals_in_Living_System
Grain Based Inflammation: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3705319/
Intestinal Permeability: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4253991/
Leaky Gut: https://paleoleap.com/leaky-gut-demystified/
Sourdough: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00217-019-03239-7
Sourdough Benefits: https://www.sourdough.co.uk/why-is-it-that-i-can-digest-sourdough-bread-and-not-commercial-bread/
Sourdough Benefits II: https://www.sourdough.co.uk/sourdough-particularly-help-support-microbiome/
WGA III: https://robbwolf.com/2013/02/28/wheat-germ-agglutinin/