If you walk through the bread aisle, you’ll see tons of giant labels that say “whole wheat” or “heart healthy multi-grain” which have been making more and more consumers turn their head away from white bread. Fact to impress the ladies: wheat grains are brown because the bran (outer layer) is brown. When the bran layer is intact, it contains the endosperm and the germ, but only the bran and germ have real nutritional benefits.
To get white flour (white bread), wheat grains are stripped of their bran and germ, leaving only the endosperm. Wheat bread has
more fiber than white bread, which is why you see all of those crazy labels. Fiber is important to both cardiovascular (it lowers cholesterol) and gastrointestinal (it keeps things moving) health, and it serves to slow down digestion of the carbs in wheat bread. This gives you more energy throughout the day, and throughout a workout.
So for those of you looking to maintaining steady insulin levels, this one is for you. As the slower the carbohydrates are digested, the more stable the insulin response. White bread, on the other hand, is a fast-digesting carb, which causes insulin levels to skyrocket which will lead to crashing and fat storage on non-training days.
Which is Healthier?
They are both great for you, depending on when and how you use them within your meal plan.
What That Means
There are times in a day when a massive insulin spike can be helpful to amplify muscle growth, and that’s when wheat bread’s slow-digesting benefits are outweighed. Specifically here, we are talking about post-workout nutrition. In fact, a little bit of jam on white bread is considered by many (Jordana Brown and Jim Stoppani to name a couple) to be among the best ways to get fast carbs after a weight lifting session.
Insulin is an anabolic hormone; the more you have after tearing muscle apart, the more muscle you’ll rebuild that muscle. A day’s diet that includes a few slices of white bread is also extremely effective at refilling glycogen stores (and thereby rebooting your metabolism) after a week or so of low-carb dieting. So, after workouts, white is right. At all other times of the day, you can’t beat wheat. Just make sure the label says whole wheat, not multigrain or plain wheat, and that it contains whole-wheat flour (not enriched white flour). — Jordana Brown
Should people trying to eat a low carb/low sugar diet eat white instead of whole wheat? Like a diabetic? Or someone who is having a problem w yeast infections?
I know whole wheat has more vitamins and fibre but it also has more carbs which if you eat a lot of the bread/cereal/pasta, isn’t good. Right?
Hey Louisa! Wheat has more vitamins and fiber which helps slow down the digestion. In short, whole grain variations won’t spike blood sugar as much as their simpler counterparts. For diabetics, it really depends on which type of diabetes they have. In general, you want to avoid spikes in blood sugar so wheat bread would be a better choice. In the long haul, try to avoid too many pastas, breads, and rice in general as they tend to promote inflammation which is a marker of almost all disease.