To not understand why white bread is evil?

[AndyWarholsOrange]

OK I understand it's not good for you in the way that cabbage and goji berries are but when exactly did it become a crime (on MN anyway) to give your DCs a slice of white toast?
I understand that saturated fat is bad because it clogs up your arteries; salt can raise blood pressure and affect bone density and excessive sugar intake can mess with insulin and cause diabetes but what does white bread actually do that's so terrible?

Also I suspected he was talking rubbish, which proved to be the case.

A very cynical medical friend of mine suggested that the best career path would be as a dermatologist. Patients rarely die of skin conditions, rarely get completely better, and rarely call you out of hours. He didn't add, this being the 1980s when people were less gullible, that it's also ripe for charlatans who want to write tendentious books relying on the fact that skin complaints tend to wax and wane, therefore any treatment, no matter how ludicrous, will work for some patients.

He missed a trick. Nutrition is far riper for that sort of nonsense. You can name almost any random foodstuff as poisonous, and make good money out of it.

"dughldiuhfdsli - people died young for reasons other than nutrition"

Yes, of course they did Japanese Margaret. However, that doesn't prove anything about the benefits/otherwise of a paleo diet. No one knows if they were healthier because of their diet. There is no way of measuring it.

"No one knows if they were healthier because of their diet"

The problem with every single "oh, modern diets are so bad for you" is that life expectancies have been monotonically increasing, and doing so for the past two hundred years. My children have something like a 50/50 chance of reaching 100. And life expectancies conceal a huge decrease in morbidity, too: it's not just that we're dying later, we're a great deal healthier a great deal longer.

It's very, very hard to make a claim that our health is getting worse when our health is clearly getting better. That's why all these weird diet hypotheses are published in crank self-help books rather than proper journals: there's just no evidence for the central hypothesis that we are becoming less healthy.

We live longer because we smoke less, and have better treatments for heart disease, cancer and stroke, not because we are healthier.

A huge huge proportion of over 60's have chronic disease of one sort or another.

All the elderly people I know who have excellent health are slim and eat a good diet. They are almost all m/c too.

The massive disparities in health between rich and poor elderly people in the UK points to diet being implicated in long term chronic conditions.

It depends on the white bread - for me a bog standard supermarket white sliced loaf is a lot less evil than a freshly baked bloomer or baguette. If I buy 'naice' bread I can't leave it alone, slather it with butter and it doesn't fill me up in spite of being 100 calories per morsel.

So yes, I do find white bread evil but not the kind which might immediately occur to you.

I just have to comment that onion, especially raw, can be incredibly bad for you. It is a common intolerance.
Last time I ate raw onion I was horribly sick and in terrible pain and generally ill for a whole weekend!

As you were ! (Don't have a particular opinion on white bread as I tend to take all food fads with a pinch of salt and just feed me and dc a balanced diet...)

White bread is revolting stuff that sticks to my teeth and the top of my mouth for some reason.
White toast is completely different and is lovely.

No, no, no white bread is fine. You just have to coach your children so that they talk about mummy's lovely home made sourdough and that it's such fun when you all make it together. And hide the crisp packets.

Not all white breads are the same though. The mass produced factory made stuff does stick to teeth. A lovely home made bread wouldn't.

All of you quoting nutritionists do realise that anyone can call themselves a 'Nutritionist' don't you? It's not a protected term like 'dietician' or 'nurse. Gillian Mckeith made a fortune from her books and products until it was pointed out that she was spouting stuff that someone doing GCSE biology could see was utter shite.
In fact, I'm a nutritionist. Look out for my book, "The Common Sense Diet" out soon.

Oh God, why did I read this thread. I've already had my healthy bowl of seeds, oats, fruit and yogurt and now I NEED a thick slice of crusty white bread. I'm going to have to go into town and buy some. So much for losing a few pounds before my birthday in 3 weeks.

Andywarhol to me Gillian McKeith's programmes were common sense - 'stop eating vast amounts of beige crap and takeaways and start eating fish with lots of fruit and veg with a few seeds, and you too will lose weight'. There, I'm a nutritionist as well.
She did go a bit over the top though. I remember her ranting at some parents who gave their children white baguettes . Apparently they were 'killing their kids'. Another time she ranted at someone for eating a tuna mayo sandwich.
Some of these so called expert nutritionists just go over board really and end up looking silly.

fatlazymummy Fancy colaborating on my book?

It wasn't me linking nutrition to life expectancy, Mintyy - I was just responding to a question, with the obvious answer.

I'm no paleo fan (though I can see it makes some sense), for the record - I love carbs too much!

BomChickaMeowMeow a bog standard supermarket white sliced loaf is a lot less evil than a freshly baked bloomer or baguette.

Eat a proper French tradition one day. So different to that plastic fluff called baguette that gets sold.