Sunday, September 6, 2020

when you pick up a loaf of pumpernickel, and check the side, it looks like this:


where are the b vitamins?

the answer is that they're in there in theory, but they aren't regulated. so, you don't really know. it doesn't say there aren't b vitamins, like it does for c and a. but, there's no actual meaningful evidence that your whole grain bread has any vitamins in it at all - it's something you have to take on empty faith. i would strongly advise against that.

compare that to cheap selection brand (food basics) 100% whole wheat bread (including the germ), which i can't find a picture of, but has the following for two slices:

calories: 170 g (but healthy people don't care about calories, they care about nutrition, because they burn calories, daily)
fat: 3%
fibre: 18%
protein: 7g
sodium: 10%
potassium: 4%
calcium: 4%
iron: 10%
thiamine: 15%
riboflavin: 6%
niacin: 25%
b6: 6%
folate: 5%
pantothenate: 8%
phosphorus: 14%
magnesium: 17%
zinc: 14%
selenium: 55%
maganese: 67%
molybdenum: 59%

i presume that molybdenum is for a nice, healthy glow.

you'll also note that the picture is for five slices, so you'd actually want to cut the percentage of calcium & iron down to two fifths of it to get a fair comparison, which is only 2.4%.

does the pumpernickel lack all of this good stuff? is it just empty calories? supposedly, it doesn't, but nobody measures it, so you don't know what you're buying.

the 100% whole wheat is consequently a far safer choice than the whole grain, if you're concerned about nutrient concentration, because you actually know what's in it because it's measured and regulated. you have no actual idea whether the whole grain bread you're buying has anything of value in it or not - it might very well just be empty sugar. you could never prove otherwise. you just have to take it on faith, which is the lowest form of reasoning. i'll take the fortified whole wheat over the unfortified whole grain, any day.

but, what i really want is some fortified pumpernickel, with those kind of numbers on the side.