White flour bad?

Press, 15 April 1981, Page 11

White flour bad?

By

DANIEL HANEY

of AP through NZPA Most people have treub?e absorbing allpurpose wheat flour, the kind used to make ordinary white bread, and this may be a previously unsuspected cause of diarrhoea and other intestinal woes, researchers have concluded. • They found that when •people eat white bread about 20 per cent of it is not absorbed in their digestive tracts. The condition is similar to that experienced by some adults who have difficulty in digesting milk. One of the researchers, Dr Michael Levitt, said, “What it means is that when the average, person eats a slice

of bread a fair proportion of it is never absorbed in the small bowel and goes down into the large intestine and can be converted into gas or into stuff that conceivably , causes diarrhoea.” i The study was conducted ’ at the Veterans’ Administration Medical Centre in . Minneapolis, Minnesota. J Using 18 healthy volun-1 teers, doctors watched the results when people ate ordinary white bread, macaroni, rice bread, or bread made from wheat flour that was low in gluten. The doc- , tors speculate that gluten, the grain protein that gives dough its elastic quality, may be the ingredient that makes bread difficult for the diges- ■ five tract to absorb. g

Once an hour the researchers measured the amount of hydrogen on the volunteers’ breath. This is a way of estimating the quantity of carbohydrate that is not 1 being absorbed in the digestive system. When carbohydrate is not absorbed bacteria in the colon breaks it ■ down and frees the hydrogen it contains. ! The researchers found that 17 of the 18 people showed substantial increases in breath hydrogen a few hours after eating six slices of bread. The results were similar for macaroni that was also made from all-purpose , flour but people who had • eaten rice bread or low- | gluten bread had little I trouble absorbing the food.