Complex Numbers

Bread

As you know, I really like science. It's not that I'm actually trained as a scientist or anything; it's just that I know it's the best tool we have for understanding ourselves and the universe. As a non-scientist, it's more like I'm checking out its butt as it goes by - I don't understand much of it, and I'll never be very close to it, but it sure does look good.

But, as I've noted before, I have serious issues with nutritional science - or, at least, how it's reported on. It's difficult to do it right, and even more difficult to get science reporters to really understand the findings. That's why you get the sense that they keep going back and forth on what's good for you and what isn't.

Some things are known to a high degree of certainty - for instance, the bad effects of trans fats on cholesterol. But other things keep changing: eggs have gone from bad to good to bad to good in my memory, and diet advice keeps changing with every study - biased or not - that seems to produce some result or another.

Worst of all, a lot of studies are biased because they're funded by people who want a certain result, and that can creep into the reports.

That's why I never did buy into the low-carb nonsense. Part of that was that I simply didn't want to: bread is the greatest of all foods, and if eating it makes me die sooner, then so be it; a life without bread is a life not worth living.

As it turns out, though, that may not be a problem.

https://qz.com/quartzy/1487485/the-scientific-case-for-eating-bread/

Bread has long been a foundational part of the human diet, but a revolt against it has been building for years—and seems to be reaching a crescendo. Today, many regard bread as a dietary archvillain—the cause of bigger waistlines and the possible origin of more insidious health concerns. Popular books and health gurus claim that bread and the proteins it harbors can cause or contribute to foggy thinking, fatigue, depression, and diseases ranging from Alzheimer’s to cancer.

But go digging through the published, peer-reviewed evidence on bread and human health, and most of what you’ll find suggests that bread is either benign or, in the case of whole-grain types, quite beneficial.

So there you have it. Time to make bread great again.

Now if only someone would admit that donuts are a health food...