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Banned bread: why does the US allow additives that Europe says are unsafe?

theguardian.com

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Re: Banned bread: why does the US allow additives that Europe says are unsafe?

#81

Post by flukus »

DennisP wrote: post #31
saalweachter wrote: post #7

I do not know anything about these chemicals in particular, but this framing: > It may sound odd, but in America, your loaf of bread can contain ingredients with industrial applications – additives that also appear in things like yoga mats, pesticides, hair straighteners, explosives and petroleum products. always bugs the hell out of me. Water has numerous industrial applications. Linseed oil and NaCl have numerous i…

I agree in general but in this case, they detailed specific health concerns for two specific chemicals in the next three sentences, so it seems like a fairly minor offense.

It doesn't mention the all important dosage, very often studies that show "has been linked to kidney and thyroid cancers in rodents" have the mice eating their own body weight of the substance in order to have a noticeable effect.

Re: Banned bread: why does the US allow additives that Europe says are unsafe?

#82

Post by icebraining »

zrobotics wrote: post #45
maxxxxx wrote: post #2

I always look at the ingredients list of bread in the US and I am always surprised how long the list is. Why do they put so much stuff (and always sugar or syrup) into any bread?

While I would agree that store-bought bread in the US contains far, far too much sugar (which is why I started baking bread myself in the first place), some amount of sugar is almost always required for leavened bread. The added sugar is what the yeast feeds on initially, since most flour won't provide enough easily-digestible sugars for the yeast. However, the amount of sugar required isn't much; my go-to recipie ca…

> some amount of sugar is almost always required for leavened bread

You don't need added sugar. Flour contains amylases which break down some of the starch in the dough to maltose and glucose, which is more than enough for the yeast.

The bread we eat only contains flour, yeast, salt and water. It's delicious in the first day and still nice on the second; after that, we toast it.

Re: Banned bread: why does the US allow additives that Europe says are unsafe?

#83

Post by SerLava »

nickik wrote: post #74
SerLava wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long distances and shipping times, the lack of a coherent food culture, the demand for cheap food, the destruction of culinary standards between 1930 and 1960.

Bread is bad even in many places where shipping is not a problem. The lack of coherent food culture I have considered and it might make sense and it would explain why the US is a special case. Demand for cheap food exists everywhere. Not sure how culinary standards got worse, depending on what standards you are talking about. Many things got better in most food groups.

After the depression and the war, we started eating a lot of frozen dinners and other cheap crap. That meant an entire generation just didn't know how to cook anything but subsistence foods.

Re: Banned bread: why does the US allow additives that Europe says are unsafe?

#84

Post by armitron »

justin66 wrote: post #61
logfromblammo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of it, because they are required to, by law. Some of it, because they are allowed to, by law. Usually, whenever you see sugar added where it is not necessary, it's because fat or salt was removed from the recipe, to "improve" the numbers on the nutrition panel. And then you have to add the fat and salt back in yourself later, with butter or mayo or something. You can't reliably and conveniently get "good" bread…

> You can't reliably and conveniently get "good" bread in the US unless you own a bread machine, and even then you have to pick out your flour carefully. Or live near a Trader Joe's or Whole Foods. They're not that unusual.

Ezekiel bread (toasted) is the best one can do at US supermarkets. It doesn’t compare to whole grain sourdough breads one can easily get in parts of Europe but it is ultra healthy and quite good tasting if you toast it.

Re: Banned bread: why does the US allow additives that Europe says are unsafe?

#85

Post by logfromblammo »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #66
justin66 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't reliably and conveniently get "good" bread in the US unless you own a bread machine, and even then you have to pick out your flour carefully. Or live near a Trader Joe's or Whole Foods. They're not that unusual.

It's not "good" bread though.

At some point "good" bread goes to "no true Scotsman" bread.

The point is that for loaf bread, a staple food for much of civilization, you have to go out of your way and make a special effort in the US to find something of similar quality to that which is the default at food merchants in other parts of the world.

As I don't have a Trader Joe's or Whole Foods anywhere near me, I can't speak to the quality of their bread offerings. At Kroger or Publix or Piggly Wiggly or Target or Wal-mart, the bagged & sliced bread quality is so far below the basic-recipe bread machine loaf that the only reasonable use case for it is to make sandwiches, where the purpose of the bread is to have a neutral flavor, and keep the other ingredients together and off your hands--a task which might still be better suited to a tortilla or cabbage leaves.

Ezekiel bread suffers from the "lifestyle aisle" problem at most grocery stores. To the store management, it isn't a "bread" as much as it is "alt-healthy lifestyle food". You don't even know it's there, unless you happen to notice it in the fridges next to the kombucha, kefir, cage-free barn-free pastured free-range eggs, and organic juice brands. If you were shopping for "bread", you would probably miss it, because it's nowhere near the bakery or the other breads. So "normal" people don't buy it, and then the store drops it from lack of sales.

Re: Banned bread: why does the US allow additives that Europe says are unsafe?

#86

Post by howard941 »

vpribish wrote: post #55

garbage website, I flag anything from the guardian and suggest that everyone who wants HR to remain valuable do the same. This goes for and any non-specialized, non-hacker, commercial media, and politics-first sites.

hobancards.com American Psycho Business Cards excepted

Re: Banned bread: why does the US allow additives that Europe says are unsafe?

#87

Post by rasz »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #75
rasz wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

look at the label?

I have. It does not contain sugar or any sugar-like ingredients.

Rechecked some of the more ridiculous mouthwash (sweet ice tea, lemon flavored) and you are right about sugar, its "only" artificial sweetener - saccharin.
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