With regards to Jonathan Brace’s letter (British Baker, April 27, pg 6), my book Bread Matters presents recent scientific research, which suggests that modern bread is based on wheat of declining nutritive value, processed in ways that make it less digestible than it could be.
This should be either refuted or confirmed by joint industry research into the effects of different baking ingredients and methods.
Until then, the attempt to mask industrial bread’s declining value by selective additions of synthetic nutrients is, at best, disingenuous. It verges on cynical manipulation when the mendacious notion of ’clean label’ is used to describe bread in which declared additives have been replaced by undeclared enzymes.
Legal it may be - for the time being - but ethical trading it most certainly is not to deny those most concerned with eating healthy food the truth about what is really in it.
I don’t dispute the industry’s efficiency and, having run a bakery for 25 years, I am well aware of market forces. With per capita bread consumption in long-term decline, suggesting reasons why modern bread doesn’t agree with so many people could hardly be called "scaremongering".
It is not "the whole milling and baking industry" that I criticise - simply its reluctance to deal honestly with disturbing evidence about its materials and techniques. Those who have nothing to hide have no need to be scared.
Andrew Whitley, Bread Matters, Cumbria
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