Just how bad is British (Chorleywood) bread for you?

Does anyone have a more scientific answer to the question of chorleywood bread being bad for you?

But people, particularly in the UK, are lazy.

Depends on whether there’s an actual bakery, or a butcher, close enough to walk to. AFAIK,  Chippenham’s got neither, despite its population growing rapidly towards 40+k, but much of that growth is on the outskirts of the original town, with no facilities within walking distance. It’s a mile walk into town for me, there’s a Tesco Express attached to the filling station about a 1/4m along the road, and a Coop about the same distance. There’s a Sainsbury’s and an Aldi a mile away in one direction, a Lidl nearly a mile away in the other.

The nearest bakery is in Lacock, 3.5 miles away, with very little parking in the village, because it’s owned by the National Trust.
These days, if I buy bread, I stick it in the freezer, because it’s usually only used for toast, otherwise I buy a load of panini and put those in the freezer, because I make up a tuna sandwich mix in a bowl and have a couple of those, along with some soup, because living on my own I can’t be bothered to spend a couple of hours cooking something, and tuna with the likes of peppers, mushrooms, red onions, olives, grated cheese, soy sauce is very tasty, and fairly healthy, and very quick to make.

the-muffin-manFull Member
The big question though is can you freeze ‘proper’ bread and still separate the slices when frozen?

We buy loaves from the local baker, they slice it and we freeze, then take out the number of slices as and when needed. Easy.

I’ve never heard of Chorleywood bread.

Lucky to have a greengrocer, baker and 2 butchers in our small town. Also a number of local cafes bake their own bread and sell it daily. The pastry filled delights in the local bakery are delicious, sweet and savoury. Yum.

Rats not eating it is obviously nonsense. It’s typically higher in additives and salt, probably slightly worse than traditional bread but hardly the spawn of satan. I’m not a fan of the standard soft white loaf but the stuff with added seeds etc is quite tasty. IMO. I’ve tried making my own and it’s not the time taken so much as the scheduling (long lead time) and the short life of the product which is the problem.

Never mind your granary nonsense. If you’re going to do crap bread, you need to go all in! 😀

Someone said to me recently, you should judge a country based on its attitude to bread.

If that’s the case Germany wins hands down.

Reckon the Spanish would beat them, tbh. Processed foods are making inroads here, but crappy “meal deals” (aka a sandwich, bag of crisps and a coke) still don’t exist. And microwave meals are close to unavailable.

Does anyone have a more scientific answer to the question of chorleywood bread being bad for you?

“Chemicals”?

I’ve never heard of Chorleywood bread.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorleywood_bread_process

A ) bread machine is ace – I’ve made bread with mine for 20 years (on second one mind) and it takes 5 minutes per night, ready in the morning.  Flour, oil, salt, sugar, water. Used it every day for sandwiches when kids were at school, twice a week now they’ve left home.

B) – @dmorts this is a brilliant bread knife – not a slicer but makes it easy for any numpty to get max use from each loaf!

https://jonoknife.co.uk/

Mmmm – Warburton’s Thick Toastie with lashings of Dairlylea! Food of the gods* 😉

(And students!)

Supermarkets just sell what people want to buy.

You don’t need to be Chomsky to think that supermarkets’ marketing and advertising shapes what people want to buy. No-one spontaneously asked for the breakfast bar category.

Supermarkets just sell what people want to buy.

Indeed. Nobody wants a fish finger butty on artisan sourdough 😀

I was in Romania in 1992. Some of the bread had sawdust in it.

Not like Western bread. You would break/cut off a chunk, and it would then live in your pocket that you nibbled at during the day.

You didn’t have it wrapped in anything, just a chunk of break lying loose.

Depends on whether there’s an actual bakery

On this topic… “Food Deserts” usually(I think?) associated with deprivation (link changed to wiki)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert

Indeed. Nobody wants a fish finger butty on artisan sourdough

I’ll go first

British bread is great! But you need to get it from an actual baker, not just buy supermarket shite.

Greggs?

None of this from a main supermarket brand is going to help you stay healthy in anyway:

Dextrose
Sugar
Emulsifiers: E471, E481
Stabiliser: Xanthan Gum
Gelling Agent: E466
Soya Flour
Preservative: Calcium Propionate
Vegetable Oils (Sustainable Palm, Rapeseed) Flour Treatment Agents: Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C ), E920 (Vegetarian)

I make my own or buy from baker. If they baker is a real enthusiast they wont even use UK flour as it messes with the texture.

Nobody wants a fish finger butty on artisan sourdough

Only if those are smoked fish fingers, in tempura batter.

In fact, there’s something one of you Ninja BBQ smoker owners can try – Smoked fish fingers

The nearest bakery is in Lacock, 3.5 miles away, with very little parking in the village, because it’s owned by the National Trust.

Same here (or a bit further in the precinct in Corsham). Melksham no longer has a bakery (Greggs does not count) or a greengrocers, but does have two butchers.

The only non Chorleywood bread I’ve seen in supermarkets is really dense and pretty crap as well. Edit – this overpriced shite

Oh man, timely thread for me as I suppose others too returning from European holidays. I think I ate my bodyweight in Baguette Traditionelle in France – basically a sourdough stick, the traditionelle is protected by french law to only contain 4 ingredients. As my waistline will attest “no pain no gain”.

the traditionelle is protected by french law to only contain 4 ingredients

6 allowed if it includes jambon fromage

None of this from a main supermarket brand is going to help you stay healthy in anyway:

“Chemicals”?

Called it.

This thread is putting recent coffee threads to shame, well done! ?

Even handling ‘live’ sourdough dough is beneficial for your microbiome, don’t have the time to bake now so buy faux sourdough from the polish deli which has some yeast in it but a high proportion of rye and spelt plus wholemeal. It’s very tasty and much better for you than supermarket white bread, even going back to the premium supermarket wholemeal stuff tastes horrible in comparison and has an odd spongy texture which I guess is down to the poor quality of the gluten structure.
we also have rye pasta and buckwheat (a pseudo grain that’s actually a grass) in a lot of meals now, again much healthier and I like the flavour.

refined white flour is evil and happy to eat a lot less of it.

The only non Chorleywood bread I’ve seen in supermarkets is really dense and pretty crap as well. Edit – this overpriced shite

Probably not proper sourdough..

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2022/apr/23/fake-bake-uk-government-steps-in-over-sourfaux-threat-to-craft-bakers

traditionally baked loaf and a factory-produced one were two “totally separate products”, adding: “It may be a cheaper option if you have a product containing additives, preservatives and yeast, but it is not genuine sourdough.”

why are people here so willing to eat shite?

We probably get a bit of a skewed view of foreign eating habits while on holiday, not everyone in France is wandering down to the artisan bakers in villages like the ones in the Stella ads.

That ZOE podcast and its write up made me twitch as Chorleywood wholemeal has the same amount of fibre as any other whole meal. Seeing such a basic mistake in the first 4 paragraphs put me off reading the rest.

To be clear I regard CBP stuff as the work of the devil but having milled the flour for a big manufacturer I know that fibre levels vary year on year depending on how strong the wheat in the grist is. I have made wholemeal flour with Australian wheat that was whiter than specification for top patent flour! We were throwing money away as the bakery could have made in spec white bread with wholemeal!!

If they baker is a real enthusiast they wont even use UK flour as it messes with the texture.

Have you ever read the Viz strip ‘Foodie Bollocks’? I ask as your comment could be a direct quote.

I’m with Alpin’s video guy, except that for me real bread contains flour, buttermilk, bicarbonate of soda, bextartar and salt. Yoghurt and milk will do, if buttermilk isn’t available

If the process was invented today I suspect they wouldn’t be allowed to call it bread, just as “spreadable” blends of butter and rape seed oil can’t be called butter, and processed slices can’t be called cheese.

The British version is also particularly cheap and nasty I think. There is an urban legend about Tesco trying to strong-arm their Irish bread suppliers into lowering their prices after they bought Quinnsworth and rebranded it, but having to back down when consumers would rather switch supermarkets than eat cheap nasty shite bread.

I think someone from Viz is scouring STW for material…

https://archive.org/details/viz-306-foodie-bollocks-jun-jul-2021

https://archive.org/details/viz-308-foodie-bollocks-sep-2021

I don’t know where my mental association between Viz and bad bowel health comes from, but that only reinforces it.

We probably get a bit of a skewed view of foreign eating habits while on holiday, not everyone in France is wandering down to the artisan bakers

I think what’s skewed is that basic “normal” bread (made from flour, yeast, salt and water) is seen as an artisanal speciality in the UK, where as elsewhere it’s just their daily normal loaf.

Don’t conflate British and Chorleywood.

Chorleywood is shite but it is perfect possible to buy good quality bread in Britain – though admittedly not all of it will be “traditional” British. We have two excellent bakers close by producing British stuff – Bloomers, Tin Loaves, Cobs, etc. and continental types such as Campagne, Baguette, Ciabatta, Focaccia, etc. The secret is none of it is manufactured in a factory. I”m particularly fond of sourdough in various forms, even for beans on toast and bacon sarnies.

I certainly agree though that for sheer variety of bread types France, Germany and Italy take some beating. I love German schwarzbrot. When visiting family in Germany as a child I used to be amazed by the variety of something as simple as breakfast rolls.

Oh and I haven’t started on the various Asian and Middle Eastern types.

I don’t know where my mental association between Viz and bad bowel health comes from

“Doctor, I have a case of diarrhoea”?

Don’t conflate British and Chorleywood

I think that’s like saying don’t conflate French Bread and Baguettes.

Seriously, shopping abroad is a real eye opener.

Especially in USA where you can’t avoid glucose in everything.

I don’t agree that good bread goes bad quickly. We lived on home made sourdough for ages and it would last up to a week depending on the weather. Now we are lucky that our local shop has good sourdough and that lasts equally well.

For the person asking about slicing you can get slicing guides (like a mitre box with slots for the knife).

I eat whatever bread is on the shelf at the supermarket and I’m still alive and healthy. Dunno what the big fuss is.

Whenever the rise of processed foods comes up I always wonder why its seen as such a big deal as nobody can ever seem to point to more than one or two randomised controlled trials that show a genuine issue with them on human biology, and life expectancy isn’t exactly dropping either in the western world.

We wander around in an environment filled with carbon monoxide fumes, particulate matter, background radiation, asbestos, and fungal spores in the air and we’re worried about a bread making process?

I eat whatever bread is on the shelf at the supermarket and I’m still alive and healthy. Dunno what the big fuss is.

it’s because it tastes like shite, or more accurately, nothing. If you’re ok with that then that’s fine I guess, seems like most of the population agree with you! Probably why we’re the cultural laughing stock of Europe [rubbing chin emoji]

Local butchers, bakers and candlestick makers are great.

Except that for those of us that go to work for a living, they are not open when I go to work, and not open by the time I get back.  So are fookall use except for a Saturday morning.  Whereas supermarkets open when working people can get there.

life expectancy isn’t exactly dropping either in the western world.

No but cancer is increasing very significantly as people live longer. Processed foods are known to be one of the major causes of cancer.

Having said that I wouldn’t worry too much about the health consequences of cheap white sliced bread. As long as you eat it in moderation of course, just like everything else.

Except that for those of us that go to work for a living, they are not open when I go to work, and not open by the time I get back.

well I work for a living and can easily get to my local bakers if I wish as they open at 7am – funnily enough, for the exact reason that people can go there before they go to work.