Why is bread so addictive?

Everyone, and I mean everyone who has ever tried to limit or cut carbs from their diet has screamed this at the bread bin in the kitchen! But who can blame us! Who doesn't love a nice crusty loaf cut into beautifully thick slices followed by the wonder of ingredients you can place in between these two tasty components and the application of an equally addictive sauce.

Pure Bliss...

The "School Lunch Box Survey: 2004" took data on the content of school lunch boxes UK wide. They found that 69% contained a white bread sandwich. It's the naturally progression of life. You drink breast milk, move onto baby food followed by your first sandwich. Then for the next 11 years you probably had at least one per day. But lunch time isn't the only time bread makes an appearance. It's eaten for breakfast, lunch, dinner, supper and snacks. 

So what?! It's only bread! I'll just eat something else! It can't be that hard! 

These are usually statement we tell ourselves when we set ourselves the challenge of cutting out bread. But within days, even hours sometimes, we experience varying degrees of:

• Fatigue
• Hunger
• Mood swings
• Decreased performance at work or home
• Depression

But why? 

Why? Why?!WHY!!!

If everyday since your were; lets say 4 years old someone injected you with heroin but one day when your 30 something and decide you want to be healthy, live an active lifestyle and get into shape. You need to stop using heroin and live drug free. To live drug free you decide to just destroy all your stash and never go near heroin ever again. Many of us would hazard the obvious guess that it's not so simple.

For a brief moment this addict lives in a pure utopia of bliss!

But what does this have to do with bread? Heroin is a derivative of opium, the same stuff used to make morphine. 

Bread is sourced from the very popular grain called wheat. Wheat is subsequently made up of many components but most importantly it contains gluten. Now, I can hear you thinking; "This guy isn't going to try and tell us wheat is bad for us?" Well you'd be wrong, but that is for another blog. 

Zioudrou et al. (1979), Teschemacher, (2003) and Fanciulli et al. (2005), plus many more studies have found that the exposure of gluten to a diet causes direct stimulation of morphine receptors within the brain. Lets swing back to the heroin addict, heroin stimulates the exact same morphine receptors. You must remember however that each of us have been designed totally unique and so to one person a simple slice of bread can be their daily fix, for others who have a lower tolerance and a well established bread addiction a larger dose of bread is required to satisfy these strange desires!

What am I saying? Basically we're all heroin addicts. And I'm not joking. To expect someone to just give up bread after eating it for decades is as ludicrous as expecting a heroin addict to give up using after decades. That's why so many of us fail to keep away from breads. We give in so easily. To enable us to give up bread/wheat we need to gradually reduce our exposure, switching to wholegrain is the first step definitely not the end goal. Wholegrain bread still contains gluten and so therefore addictive but it's a stepping stone. Gradually ween yourself down and simultaneously replace with a wheat-free source of carbohydrates: for example: potatoes, rice or even gluten free breads.

Soon the desire to devour a ham sandwich will be forever a distant memory and you will be on the road towards a healthy lifestyle.

Stay tuned to discover why wheat is so bad for you besides it's addictive qualities!

Thanks for reading,

Ethan