Is brown bread or brown rice is a healthier choice?  In a bid to stay healthy we turn to supermarket shelves lined with the latest health foods. Hence there is an increasing and ever-growing demand for healthier (and more expensive) options like whole-wheat, multi grain,ragi oatmeal versions of bread,be it as sandwiches,or maggi or idli. For our generation the healthy breads are an acquired taste but better late than never.  However, how many of us really understand these health products? Do we read the labels and ingredients on them and if you do, how much of it do you really understand? Regular white bread,is high in gluten and starch,whole-wheat and multi-grain versions are higher in fibre and other nutrients like vitamins and minerals. Given all of this, it would make sense to switch to brown bread or multigrain right ? What about diet soda or zero calorie drink. Let’s find out.

Brown Bread vs White Bread

Bread is a naturally low-fat food, rich in complex carbohydrates.  Milling wheat into white flour removes the outer bran coat and wheatgerm, losing most of the goodness(minerals and vitamins) in the process. Thus eating the unrefined wheat or rice or sugar is healthier as it retains the minerals and vitamins that are present in the outer bran or husk. While whole-wheat is made out of atta,multi-grain bread is a mix of five or seven types of grains,including jowar,barley,nachni,oat etc. Similarly,oat bread is made out of oatmeal.Of course,there has to be a percentage of maida in these breads as well to hold the structure together. The food expert uses a GI scale called the Glycemic index (GI value) to measure the quickness in which a particular food, once eaten, turns into glucose in the blood. The higher the GI value, the more harm to your body’s metabolism; leading to obesity and all manner of ageing-related diseases. The GI value of brown bread is less than the GI value of white bread.

 So Is Brown Bread Good. Unfortunately not.

• A slice of brown or whole wheat bread is thicker and denser, compared to white bread. So it has more calories than white bread.
• Just like everything that glitters is not gold,every brown bread is not the same as whole-wheat bread.Brown bread, however, could be wholemeal or white flour coloured brown with caramel or a bit of jaggery or molasses in the bread. You will need to check the flour details on the label.
• In whole-wheat you don’t get a lot of leavening, it has a grainy texture, and it doesn’t expand as much as Maida, and doesn’t bounce back as easily when squeezed. It spoils easily, because the oils in wheat-germ go rancid pretty fast. More preservatives are added to improve the shelf life. Emulsifiers are added to improve its texture. It means extra chemicals go into you bodies.
• The fibre that you are supposedly getting from whole wheat bread is negligible as compared to the chemicals and emulsifiers that you are ingesting. You would rather get that fiber from your vegetables, fruits or salad. Let’s go back to what we learnt in school. There are five basic food groups -Energy givers or carbohydrates, building blocks or proteins, essential fats, vitamins and minerals. Each food item is divided into one of these groups depending on what it is the best source of. Thus, wheat, rich or carbohydrates(carbs) are primarily energy givers  and are eaten so that the body gets enough fuel to carry out all its daily metabolic processes and any physical activity during the day. Carbs are not the main source of vitamins and minerals that group is mainly composed of fruits and vegetables that are the power house of the essential anti-oxidants and minerals. So, the question is, Why are we then searching for minerals in a food item that is not its source?‘. Yes, whole wheat atta over maida or brown rice over polished white rice does have more manganese, selenium and magnesium, but I can get all of this and a hundred times more nutrition from just an apple. Why search for a needle in a haystack when the search begins and ends in a simple fruit. 
  

Brown Sugar vs White Sugar, Brown Egss

Same with sugar and eggs. Well, the calorie count of one gram of sugar  brown or white is identical and other than calories sugar gives us nothing else. Yes, brown sugar may give you a bit more minerals be cause it is unrefined cane sugar, but this doesn’t earn it any extra brownie points.The nutritional value is not dependent on the colour of the egg. It is the colour of the hen that lays the egg that decides its colour! White feathered hens lay white eggs and red-feathered hens lay brown eggs.

Diet Soda or Zero Calorie Drink

But I drink diet soda, With no calories or sugar, said a friend when we went out for lunch. When taken at face value, diet soda seems like a health-conscious choice. It saves you the  calories you’d find in a sugary soft drink while still satisfying your urge. But Diet sodas are carbonated beverages, instead of sugar, they are sweetened with artificial sweeteners. Diet doesn’t mean calorie-free. The caloric amount is small enough for beverage companies to list as no calorie (lesser than five calories per serving), but artificial sweeteners breaks down in the body into chemicals which generate calories. Not only is diet soda NOT helping you lose weight, it has countless negative effects on your health.

At the end of the day, both Diet Coke and Coke Zero are processed products and come packed with chemical preservatives and additives, the calories may be zero but so are the nutrients. It’s just the taste you get, no vitamins or minerals.  When you know you’re not consuming any liquid calories, it might be easier to justify that double cheeseburger or extra slice of pizza

Akshay Kumar’s fitness ideas

Akshay Kumar, 47, is by one of the fittest man in the film industry. He leads an extremely disciplined life and is a fitness freak. Yet, after working out for the past 32 years, he admits that he still does not have more than 4-6 abs. And that is because he has never resorted to any short cuts for building his body, as he believes in building a strong healthy, long-term body.  Some of his tips from the article Akshay Kumar: After 32 years of working out, (though he eats brown rice) are as given below. One of the reason I am mentioning this article is because when we had gone out for lunch and our friend bought diet coke and brown bread sandwich, discussion started with this article on Akshay Kumar.

Today, it has become a joke to take enhancers, powders, shakes or steroids. What about those days when you used to have whole milk, vegetables, sweet potatoes and brown rice and eat meat if you were a non-vegetarian? The muscles used to build up and be there forever.Get out of eating that processed food. Don’t fall prey to American marketing. Whatever your mother makes at home is the best.

I don’t eat after 6.30-7 pm in the evening. You need to ideally eat by 7 pm, so that you have given the body four hours to digest so that the stomach gets complete time to rest along with the body when you sleep. Even if you can’t exercise, walk everyday and eat by 7 pm and see how it will change your life.

There are no short cuts to building your body. Now they just want to pump up their muscles in three months. That cannot be done without resorting to many artificial and harmful things I.know training is hard, muscles hurt and goals take longer to reach, but when you are training naturally that is the best way. What people are doing is cheating and getting you sucked into a multi-billion dollar franchise where they are teaching you how to build a fake body. I have friends and people in my industry, who are going crazy and people following them, as it is the easy way out. But there is no substitute for hard work.

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Do we need to discriminate based on colour even in food?. You spend extra money on whole wheat bread and you’re positive you’ll enjoy a low glycemic index, nutritional fibers, and generally better health. The fact is, the vast majority of breads are just slight variations, a little colouring here, a sprinkling of seeds there, of the same extremely unhealthy processed bread. Do your research and read your labels for the choice that’s right for you. Let us all be happy, guilt-free and enjoy the bread. in limited quantities. Save calories, save money.