Online fitness food suppliers sell ready mixes for "protein" or "low-carb" bread. It is bread you can eat in good conscience, touts a typical advert: diet-friendly and more nutritious than wheat bread.
Wheat has acquired a bad reputation at least in the figure-conscious crowd. Proponents of a low-carb diet have declared bread made of traditional flour to be off-limits, since its carbohydrates are supposedly fattening.
And to some extent they're right, says Stuttgart-based dietician Sven Bach, noting that "two slices of bread and jam for breakfast, later a sandwich snack, wheat noodles at lunch, a sweet pastry made from wheat flour in the afternoon, and bread again at supper that's too much."
So is wheat bread a demon we should steer clear of? Bach says no. "Bread won't make you fat or stupid. Don't shun bread, wheat bread included!"
Yet, Bach recommends that you replace half of your bread intake with vegetables or salad and simply eat the slice of cheese you would normally eat. According to the German dietitian, only 40 percent of your daily diet should consist of carbohydrates, along with 40 percent fat and 20 percent of protein.
Stefan Kabisch from the German Institute of Human Nutrition assures that diet too high in sugar can lead to many problems, such as diabetes and heart attacks, noting that all carbohydrates are made up of sugars.
When you explain this idea to people, he says, they completely overreact by deeming all sources of carbohydrates to be harmful, including ordinary bread, the German News Agency reported.
Although there's been little scientific research on the nutritive value of so-called protein bread, Kabisch sees it as an alternative for people who want to cut down on carbohydrates without breaking with their bread-eating habits.
For Kabisch, the key question isn't whether a loaf of bread is made of wheat, but from whole-wheat or white flour. While the brown bread is high in fiber and also filling, he points out, the white bread causes a rapid spike in blood sugar levels, followed by a crash shortly afterwards. Wheat-based baked goods have fallen out of favor not only among waistline watchers thanks to gluten, to which some people are intolerant. The fact is that most people feel better without gluten, claims a recipe for gluten-free, low-carb bread on the website of a sports magazine.
For Kabisch, that's not a fact at all, saying that "95 percent of the normal population can eat gluten with no problem. But a huge number of mostly young people believe it's harmful for everyone."
The baking industry is feeling the pinch as a result. According to Friedrich Longin, an agricultural biologist, Bakers report despairingly that people tell them they no longer tolerate wheat bread, but can eat bread made of oat.
Migraines or gastrointestinal problems are often cited as symptoms, however, there's no scientific evidence that wheat is less readily tolerable than other cereal grains.
Longin leads a team in charge of wheat research at the University of Hohenheim in Germany. Together with baker Heiner Beck and miller Hermann Guetler, Longin wants to solve the mystery when it comes to claims about wheat. To this end, the three recently gathered and baked 42 kinds of wheat bread over three days, using varieties of wheat grown organically and conventionally, with less and more nitrogen fertilizer.
Bernd Kuetscher, general manager of the German Bread Institute, doesn't seem very worried about widespread anti-wheat sentiment. He says these worries are triggered by books and media reports that are less interested in presenting facts than in boosting sales and circulation. As Kuetscher sees it, bread's public image has indeed changed for the better. He says people have become more aware of the great taste of "the number one food" in their country.
