Lots of sugar, hardly any nutritional values: toast bread is not healthy

Toastbrot is the most popular bread in Germany. According to Statista, it was the best-selling bread in our country in 2021 with a share of 27.9 percent in total turnover. The reasons are obvious: the rectangular slices come in many varieties, they seem to keep forever and the already good, sweet taste of the soft bread is even better when it is toasted.

But that’s where the problem lies: the sweetness, the roasting, the softness. Nothing about toast is nutritionally good. Experts advise against the white discs. They can lead to illness.

Plain buttered toast is high in sugar, saturated fatty acids, low in fiber and preservatives. It does not make you feel full for long and also contains a lot of calories from unhealthy ingredients.

The experts at “diabetesDE” point out that “a diet high in simple sugars and refined carbohydrates and low in fiber and complex carbohydrates may be associated with an increased risk of diabetes.” All these bad qualities apply to white toast bread. And unfortunately, the whole-grain variety doesn’t fare much better nutritionally, according to a look at the nutritional information.

Here is a comparison of the nutritional information of butter toast, wholemeal toast and wholemeal bread:

Wholemeal bread scores on nutritional values. And what about the saturation?

How quickly we get full depends, among other things, on the fiber content. According to nutritionists, you would need to eat five slices of whole-wheat toast at 25 grams each, or 16 slices of light toast at 25 grams each, to reach the amount of fiber in two slices of “normal” whole-wheat bread at 50 grams. bread.

And if we need more toast to fill us up, we also eat significantly more toppings such as sausage, cheese, jam and chocolate cream. This provides an extra plus of often unhealthy calories.

In addition, toast has a significant health disadvantage compared to wholemeal bread: roasting. Many find the toast particularly crunchy and dark. But cancer experts advise only eating toast when it’s golden brown. Because the dark brown or even black surfaces contain carcinogenic substances, including acrylamide and the fatty acid ester 3-MCPD. Among other things, they increase the risk of stomach and intestinal cancer, because the substances remain there the longest during digestion.

The Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) also advises eating toast only plated and never charred. According to the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), significantly lower amounts of acrylamide are produced at temperatures below 180 degrees than at higher temperatures.

Toast seems to take forever. If you keep it dry in a lunch box, you can often eat it well past its best before date. Sure, it’s mixed with preservatives.

But even toast will show some greenish mold at some point. Now it’s time to throw away the whole package, because the mold spores quickly infect the whole loaf, even if the green mold is not yet visible on some slices.