White foods like white rice, white bread and white flour are at the heart of sugar crashes. You might not know it, but these foods are brimming with refined carbs that are just as good as sugar.

In contrast, less processed whole grains are far healthier, retaining most of their nutrients while having fewer carbs. Also, the carbs in whole grains take longer to digest, so there’s no chance of blood sugar spiking.

Plus, whole grains are great sources of B vitamins, which are essential for mental health. Vitamin B6, for example, helps in producing serotonin, the neurotransmitter responsible for regulating mood, as previously noted. Here Leslie Locklear, Food.news, reflects on how you can make bread healthy again:

“Bread has had quite the bad rap, with many equating its starchy nature to unhealthy diets. They could not be more wrong.

By itself, bread — especially if it’s made from whole-grain flour and organic ingredients — is actually good. It’s what we put on it that makes it unhealthy.

However, there are many ways to make bread healthy. Here are some of them:

Use sprouted whole grain

Just like its name suggests, sprouted whole grain bread is made using whole grains that have started to sprout from exposure to both heat and moisture.

While this may seem like a strange thing to do, the sprouting process actually adds more vitamins to the final product. This is because, during sprouting, many of the nutrients present in the grains become more bioavailable.

For instance, pita bread made with 50 percent sprouted wheat flour was found to 3 times as much folate than pita made with conventional ingredients. Folate, according to experts, is a vitamin critical for converting food into energy.

In addition, research has revealed that the sprouting process also increases the antioxidants in the grains. This means that the end product can help the body combat the negative effects of free radicals from the environment.

Even better: the sprouting process actually breaks down some of the starches, which means that the resulting bread does not increase blood sugar as much as other grains, thereby making them a good choice for people with diabetes.

They are also more filling than more refined bread, mainly due to their high fiber and protein content.

Use sourdough cultures to leaven your bread

Instead of using conventional, store-bought yeast, why not use a sourdough culture to make your dough rise?

For those unfamiliar with this ingredient, a sourdough culture or starter is actually a combination of naturally-occurring yeast and bacteria and added to a mixture of flour and water.

This mixture, which is considered a “live” product due to the presence of active microorganisms, helps make the dough rise by digesting the starch and producing carbon dioxide.

Aside from making it rise, using a sourdough starter can also help reduce the number of phytates in the dough. Phytates are antinutrients that bind to minerals, thus preventing them from being absorbed by the body.

Another benefit to using sourdough in bread making, experts said, is that it makes the final product have a low glycemic index, making it a boon for those with reduced insulin sensitivity.”

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